Read Chapter 28: Cormac's Return

The rain had stopped by the time the rider came up the lane, but the mud still sucked at his horse's hooves. Maeve was at the kitchen window, counting sacks of meal that had not yet arrived, when she saw him—a man in a wide-brimmed hat, shoulders broad beneath a traveler's coat, sitting his horse like he owned the road.

She did not recognize him at first. Then he lifted his head.

"Cormac." The word came out before she could stop it, and she was already moving, apron still tied, boots sliding on the flags as she ran through the scullery and out the back door.

He dismounted stiffly, older than she remembered by a decade rather than the four years he'd been gone. His face had weathered—wind-burned, lined at the eyes—but the grin was the same gap-toothed, reckless grin that had gotten them both into trouble as children.

"Little sister." He caught her as she threw herself at him, lifted her off the ground, and spun her once before setting her down, mud splattering both their boots. "You're thin. Feeding you poorly, are they?"

"You're late." She slapped his chest, then pulled him close again, breathing in the smell of salt and horses and sweat. "Four years. You wrote twice. Twice, Cormac."

"I'm not much for letters."

He stepped back and looked at her—really looked, the way he used to before he left, assessing her like he could still see the eleven-year-old girl who followed him to the river. "I heard about Brennan. I'm sorry I wasn't here."

The mention of her husband sent a familiar ache through her chest, dulled now by months of practical necessity. "You heard."

"News travels even to where I've been." He glanced past her at the house, at the patched roof and the new scar of the granary's blackened ruins. "And I heard about the fire. And the Englishman. Seems I left you to fight my wars for me."

"Someone had to."

He laughed, and the sound was so familiar she almost wept. "Still sharp as flint."

Inside, she set the kettle on and watched him shed his coat by the hearth. He moved like a man accustomed to small spaces and long watches—careful, measured. When he sat, he sat with his back to the wall.

"You've money." She said it flatly, because she'd seen the weight of his saddlebags when he'd slung them over his shoulder, the way his belt hung heavy at the hip.

"I've made something of myself," he said, drawing a pouch from his jacket. He tossed it onto the table between them. Soft leather, fat with coin. "Eleven hundred pounds. Maybe more when I sell the rest."

She did not touch it. "Australia."

"Victoria. Gold country."

"I thought you said America."

He blinked—too quick, she caught it. "I wrote America, didn't I? Ended up Australia. More opportunity there."

"You wrote America, three years ago. You wrote that you'd bought land in Pennsylvania."

"Land didn't pan out. Moved on." He shrugged, easy as water. "Story of my life, Maeve. You know that."

She didn't push. Four years was a long time, and men reinvented themselves when they went to the far places of the world. But something sat wrong in her chest as she studied the set of his jaw, the way he wouldn't quite meet her eye when he spoke of where he'd been.

The kettle whistled. She poured, letting the steam rise between them.

"Is it enough?" he asked. "The money. Will it save us?"

It was a strange way to put it. *Us.* He'd never cared for the estate—left at twenty to avoid the weight of its obligations, left her and Da to carry it. But she pushed that thought aside too.

"Between the gold and things I'll tell you tonight—the magistrate's ruling, the covenant—we might not just save it. We might prosper."

"Prosper." He tested the word like it was foreign to him. "Good. That's good, Maeve."

They talked through the afternoon—of her sister Brigid's new babe, of old Padraig's rheumatism, of the tenants who had come to her aid after the fire. He listened more than she remembered him doing, nodding at her accounts of Ashworth and Sir Godfrey with grunts and narrowed eyes.

"An Englishman," he said when she finished. "You trust him."

"I'd have lost the granary otherwise. He turned against Sir Godfrey. Sacrificed his own position to help me."

"Englishmen don't sacrifice anything."

"He did."

Cormac drummed his fingers on the table, and for a moment he looked like their father—the same deep brow, the same way of turning judgment inward. "And the American deed. You still have it."

She froze. "How do you know about that?"

He shrugged again, too casual. "Mother's letters. She mentioned it."

Their mother did not write letters, at least not in Cormac's direction—Maeve had posted enough unanswered ones to know. But she let it go, another inconsistency piled on the others.

That night, they sat at the table—Ashworth summoned at Cormac's request, the two men sizing each other like dogs over a fence. Cormac laid out eight thousand pounds more in promissory notes and letters of credit from a Melbourne trading house, enough to cover the debts and fund a drainage scheme for the western fields. Ashworth examined each one carefully, his pale eyes flicking over the seals and signatures.

"They're valid," he said finally. "Genuine. The banking house is reputable."

Maeve let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "Then we begin again."

Cormac raised a glass of the good whiskey—the last one from Brennan's private stock—and toasted her. "To new beginnings, little sister." His grin was wide, warm, and utterly immovable.

Later, alone in her room, Maeve opened the strongbox. The locket lay on top, heavy and cold. She pressed the catch, watching her mother's portrait revolve into a tiny map of an island that matched no place on any chart she'd ever seen. Australia. She traced the coastlines with her finger, looking for the shape.

It did not match any coast.

She closed the locket, remembering Cormac's face when he'd spoken of Victoria—the slight hesitation before the word, as if he were selecting it from a shelf of possibilities.

_Da always said Cormac was the one to watch,_ she thought. _The one who could charm the birds from the trees and then charge them for the privilege._

She tucked the locket back into the strongbox, locked it, and slid the key beneath her pillow.

Morning would come, and with it a hundred tasks. The false weakness she planned to feed Sir Godfrey's informant would need a different tune now—no woman with her brother's fortune behind her would look ready to capitulate. She would have to adjust.

But for tonight, she lay in the dark and listened to the house settle around her, to the creak of timbers and the soft footsteps of a brother who had been gone four years and had not once asked about their father's death.