“Three dwellings,” she murmured.
The very idea of such a cost made it hard to swallow. Ashlinn leaned forward, pointing to a line lower on the page. “’Tisn’t as bad as it sounds. They only have to be twelve by fourteen feet, a shack really. You could build a manor house on the prime plot and two small guest houses on the other two, and still have coin from Michael’s inheritance left for cattle or whatever you choose to do with the land,” she said.
Not an ounce of push tempered her tone. It was merely matter-of-fact, almost disinterested. “If you don’t want it, don’t worry, I can send along a cousin of ours to settle it. Take a few days to think it over. We can discuss it more over the week if you like.”
Grinning, Catriona set the papers aside. “You will be staying awhile?” She tried not to sound too eager, but feared she failed terribly.
The few times she and Ashlinn had been able to visit with one another before the war had always been filled with interesting conversation and fun. Michael had always been happier when she was around, as if his sister brought out the best in him. It had made her visits the highlight of Catriona’s married life. Now, with Michael gone, she longed to have her sister-in-law all to herself. Guilt stirred within her over feeling that way, but she pushed it down.
“Yes, we are staying in the hotel down on main street, and visiting whenever ’tis convenient for you,” Ashlinn said.
Catriona shook her head. “A hotel, no. You must stay here. There are dozens of empty rooms in this house, and you and Sean are more than welcome.”
Eager gaze going to Sean, Ashlinn inclined her head. He grinned and nodded.
“Only if you are sure we are not imposing. We did arrive unannounced, after all,” Ashlinn said.
They clasped hands and grinned at one another like schoolgirls. “O’ course not, you’re family!” Catriona insisted.
After a bit of giggling and more hugging, Catriona called for her servants to ready the rooms and draw water for baths for both Ashlinn and Sean. She would see to it that her sister and new brother-in-law had every comfort she could provide. As they headed up to their rooms to retire for the evening, Catriona called for one of her servants. The head of the household help sent along a skinny young man who either hadn’t filled his clothes out yet, or had just gone up a size due to a growth spurt. A shock of hair almost as red as her own peaked out from beneath his cap. Catriona handed him a letter.
“Please deliver this to Mrs. Deirdre Quinn,” she told him.
Accepting the letter, he bowed deeply to her and hastened out the door, closing it carefully behind him. Catriona’s heart began to beat a steadily increasing rhythm. Her heart wanted two different things, and her head another entirely. Right now, she needed desperately to speak to her friends.
Chapter 2
The setting sun cast a lovely orange glow on the open marketplace by the time Catriona finished explaining. Open mouthed and silent, both Sadie and Deirdre stared at her. The silence from her friends stretched her nerves until they were taught as a fiddle’s strings. No disappointment or suspicion played upon their faces, only shock. She had told them every word and every nuance of character that had come to pass in her parlor, leaving no question as to her sister-in-law’s intentions.
Orange light—and something else, was it excitement?—began to fill Deirdre’s dark blue eyes as she leaned forward. “What an adventure! Are you going to do it?” she asked.
Joy at the very idea brought a smile to her face at the same time anxiety flipped her stomach upside down. “I couldn’t possibly,” she murmured.
While her eyes were cast out over the fruit stands and merchant carts, she saw neither the people who walked the cobbled city center, nor the wares they searched for. Instead, she saw rolling fields of green bathed in brilliant sunlight.
“But you have always wanted to work with the land! Can you imagine it, the land of sunshine, the Wild West!” Deirdre exclaimed, her hands moving with each word as if they spoke for her as much as her voice did.
She turned a circle, twirling her burgundy skirt out, pausing halfway around to fetch an orange off a merchant stand. Eyebrows rising, she held the fruit beneath Catriona’s nose. “A place where things like this grow wild, they say!”
Though she shared her friend’s enthusiasm, fear held her back from expressing it. Plaintive calls for her to handle the expensive fruit carefully came from the vendor behind her, but Deirdre seemed not to hear.
Sadie nodded. “You do have a knack for growing things.”
The vendor behind them began to beseech their better nature. His desperate pleas finally made Catriona dig a few coins from her purse and press them into his hand as they walked by.
“You want to; I can see it in your eyes. Why stay here where the hens of high society sneer down their noses at you?” Deirdre asked.
Her gaze moved from Deirdre’s flushed face to Sadie’s guarded one. “I couldn’t leave you two. Sadie here would be out of a job, and who knows what trouble you would get up to with me gone,” she said, one eye narrowing at Deirdre as her gaze returned to her.
Laughing, Deirdre threw an arm around her as they walked. “That is certainly true, on both counts. But what if we both went with you?” Not so much as an ounce of tease peppered her tone. Excitement, yes, but not teasing.
“You’re serious?” Catriona asked.
She watched as Sadie’s brows rose, her head tilted, and a smile started to lift the corners of her lips. Deirdre draped her other arm around Sadie and leaned down to whisper in her ear.
“Sunshine, beaches, a warm ocean, all within a few days’ travel,” she tempted her.
The smile playing at Sadie’s full lips spread. The joy on her face stripped away the aging her husband’s death had wrought upon her, making her look her true twenty-five years once again. “It would be an adventure, would it not?” she asked.
Deirdre nodded. “The grandest adventure, indeed! Far away from the cackling hens of New York high society, in a place virtually untouched. Imagine it, the three of us forging a new path.” Her arm tightened around Catriona. “Three plots, one for each of us. That means it is meant to be. I would be happy to pay the fees on one of the plots and build a home on it. Together, we can fund the building of Sadie’s home.” She held up a hand just as Sadie’s mouth opened. “I know what you are going to say, it would not be charity. If you insist, you could work off the cost of the home by working at whatever endeavor we undertake with the land, but the home would be yours, yours!”
The passion in her friend’s voice moved Catriona, stirring an excitement in her that she hadn’t realized had been sleeping there.
“But what venture would we undertake?” Sadie asked.
Her thoughts went to her garden, the only part of that house that felt like hers. The idea sprung immediately into Catriona’s mind, as if it had merely been waiting for the right prompting. “A winery.”
Springing up, Deirdre skipped ahead of them, spun around to face them, and clapped her hands together. The woman’s girlish enthusiasm melted away the last of Catriona’s resistance. “That would be perfect! With our connections here in New York, we could even sell to buyers here!”
Eyes alight, Sadie laid grabbed one of Catriona’s hands. “Your mother’s grapes! You can take the vines. That is perfect,” she said.
Those vines were the one possession that her mum had brought all the way from Ireland, nursing them in American soil before Catriona had even been born. When she left home to marry Michael, her mum had given her a cutting off the vine as a wedding gift.
Shaking her head, Catriona stopped on the sidewalk before one of her