Page 40 of Road Trip
He quickly removed his leather apron. “If you can wait five minutes while I lock up, I’ll show you around myself.” He hesitated. “Unless—you’ve a husband or boyfriend or someone like that as your traveling companion?”
“No husband or boyfriend,” Maeve assured him. “Just my sister, who overdid the Guinness at lunch and skipped out on the last half of the tour. She’s probably passed out in our room right now. She’ll never miss me. A tour would be lovely—unless it costs extra?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Totally on the house.”
CHAPTER 18
Liam opened the passenger-side door to a dung-brown vehicle that vaguely resembled a Jeep, if the Jeep had been made of random car parts found at a roadside junkyard.
“Hang on,” he said, picking up a pair of mud-caked boots and flinging them from the seat into the back of the vehicle. Next, he picked up a collection of wadded-up chip bags and tossed them into the back, along with a Styrofoam cup and two empty Coke cans. He opened the glove box and rummaged around, bringing out a faded red bandana, and used it to dust off the seat, which was patched in multiple places with duct tape.
“Don’t want ya gettin’ hair all over your nice black pants,” he said, then gestured. “Please, take a seat.”
“This is quite an, um, car,” Maeve said, settling herself in. “Did you build it yourself?”
“You could say that,” he said, revving the engine and backing rapidly out of the gravel parking lot and onto the roadway. “My brother Cormac helped. He works at a salvage yard, you see. We built this as a lark, just to see if we could make it work. To our shock and amazement, it runs. Usually.”
As he’d pointed out earlier, the sun was indeed shining, and the day, which had started out chilly for Maeve’s taste, had warmed up considerably.
“I’ll show you the estate, shall I?”
He didn’t wait for a reply but made a sharp right turn onto an intersecting road.
“First stop, the home farm. It’s where most of the villagers lived back in the day. They didn’t own their land, of course; that was owned by the lord of the manor. But they lived and farmed there, some of them, right up until about twenty years ago.”
“Who owns that land now?” Maeve asked.
“It’s part of the estate, of course, so it belongs to the Irish Trust. They came in and restored a lot of the old places that had been abandoned and fallen into tatters over the years.”
“Why abandoned?”
He gave her an incredulous look. “You know anyone who wants to live in a hut with no electricity, no heat other than what you get from a fireplace, and no water except from a cistern in the kitchen? Also, no indoor plumbing.”
“Not really.”
“Yeah, neither did anyone else. Of course part of the problem is Ireland’s population is for shite, outside the big cities. Been that way for years.”
“That’s a shame,” Maeve said. “It’s such a beautiful place, just from what I’ve seen since we arrived.”
“Most beautiful place on earth,” Liam agreed. “But for most folks, it’s a bit of an acquired taste.”
He steered the Jeep past a sign pointing toTARRYMORE HOME FARMand drove around a sign sternly proclaimingNO ENTRY.
“Um, is this allowed?” Maeve asked.
He turned and flashed her a quick grin. “Not strictly speaking. But I’m on staff here, so to speak, and my cousin Maddie runs this operation, so I’m thinking she won’t have us arrested.”
The unpaved road climbed a steep hill, past a group of small outbuildings including a barn, and a pasture where five cows grazed placidly in the tall grass.
“I thought you said nobody lives here,” Maeve said. “Who tends to the cows?”
“Same ones who tend the sheep and the goats and the pigs and the chickens,” Liam said as he pulled the Jeep alongside a small one-story whitewashed cottage. Smoke curled from the chimney, and pots of brightly blooming geraniums flanked a wooden doorway. As they approached the nearest house a trio of chickens raced past, chased by a small pigtailed girl dressed in an old-fashioned homespun dress and pinafore.
“Whoa, there, Susannah,” Liam said, catching the child around the waist and swooping her up into the air.
“Put me down,” the girl protested, beating her fists against his chest. “My hens are on the loose again!”
“And how did that happen?” he asked, gently setting her back onto the ground.
