“Since it’s Shawn who lives there now, and his piano you were playing with, I’d say the message was clear enough.”

“But I listen to his music all the time. You can’t be around him five minutes without it.”

Mollie started to speak, then thought better of it and only covered her daughter’s hand with her own. Her darling Mary Brenna, she thought, had such a hard time recognizing anything she couldn’t pick apart and put together again. “I’d say when it’s time for you to understand, you will.”

“She makes you want to help her,” Brenna murmured.

“You’re a good lass, Mary Brenna. Perhaps before it’s done, help her is just what you’ll do.”

TWO

AS THE AIR was raw and the wind carried a sting, Shawn set out the makings for mulligan stew. The morning quiet of the pub’s kitchen was one of his favorite things, so as he chopped his vegetables and browned hunks of lamb, he enjoyed his last bit of solitude before the pub doors opened.

Aidan would be in soon enough asking if this had been done or that had been seen to. Then Darcy would begin to move about upstairs, feet padding back and forth across the floor and the ghost echo of whatever music her mood called for that day drifting down the back stairs.

But for now Gallagher’s was his.

He didn’t want the responsibility of running it. That was for Aidan. Shawn was grateful he’d been born second. But the pub mattered to him, the tradition of it that had been passed down generation to generation from the first Shamus Gallagher, who with his wife beside him had built the public house by Ardmore Bay and opened its thick doors to offer hospitality, shelter, and a good glass of whiskey.

He’d been born the son of a publican and understood that the job was to provide comfort of all sorts to those who passed through. Over the years, Gallagher’s had come to mean comfort, and it became known for its music—the seisiun , an informal pub gathering of traditional music—as well as the more structured sets provided by hired musicians from all over the country.

Shawn’s love of music had come down to him through the pub, and so through the blood. It was as much a part of him as the blue of his eyes, or the shape of his smile.

There was little he liked better than working away in his kitchen and hearing a tune break out through the doors. It was true enough that he was often compelled to leave what he was doing and swing out to join in. But everyone got what they’d come for sooner or later, so where was the harm?

It was rare—not unheard of, but rare—for him to burn a pot or let a dish go cold, for he took a great measure of pride in his kitchen and what came out of it.

Now the steam began to rise and scent the air, and the broth thickened. He added bits of fresh basil and rosemary from plants he was babying. It was a new idea of his, these self-grown herbs, one he’d taken from Mollie O’Toole. He considered her the best cook in the parish.