Marion Lennox
To Mitzi. My shadow.
A WOMAN WAS stuck in his bog.
Actually, Finn Conaill wasn’t sure if this land was part of the estate, but even if this wasn’t the property of the new Lord of Glenconaill he could hardly ignore a woman stuck in mud to her thighs.
He pulled off the road, making sure the ground he steered onto was solid.
A motorbike was parked nearby and he assumed it belonged to the woman who was stuck. To the unwary, the bike was on ground that looked like a solid grass verge. She’d been lucky. The wheels had only sunk a couple of inches.
She’d not been so lucky herself. She was a hundred yards from the road, and she looked stuck fast.
‘Stay still,’ he called.
‘Struggling makes me sink deeper.’ Her voice sounded wobbly and tired.
‘Then don’t struggle.’
Of all the idiot tourists... She could have been here all night, he thought, as he picked his way carefully across to her. This road was a little used shortcut across one of County Galway’s vast bogs. The land was a sweep of sodden grasses, dotted with steel-coloured washes of ice-cold water. In the distance he could see the faint outline of Castle Glenconaill, its vast stone walls seemingly merging into the mountains behind it. There’d been a few tough sheep on the road from the village, but here there was nothing.
There was therefore no one but Finn to help.
‘Can you come faster?’ she called and he could hear panic.
‘Only if you want us both stuck. You’re in no danger. I’m coming as fast as I can.’
Though he wouldn’t mind coming faster. He’d told the housekeeper at the castle he’d arrive mid-afternoon and he was late already.
He spent considerable time away from his farm now, researching farming methods, investigating innovative ideas, so he had the staff to take care of the day-to-day farming. He’d been prepared to leave early this morning, with his manager more than ready to take over.
But then Maeve had arrived from Dublin, glamorous, in designer clothes and a low-slung sports car. She looked a million light