Maguire sighed deeply. "Aye," he said, "but then I'd do whatever I had to to please her, Father."

The priest nodded, satisfied, and then draining his tumbler he stood up. "I'll be on my way then. I've Vespers to oversee." He set the crystal down on the sideboard. "I'll be here to get ye through it all, Rory Maguire. God bless ye." He made the sign of the cross over his host, and departed the little hall.

Rory Maguire sat staring into the fire. Jasmine was coming back to Maguire's Ford. He had fallen in love with her the moment he had first seen her in Dundeal, stepping gracefully down the gangway off the Cardiff Rose, on her husband's arm. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, then or since. She had taken that obsequious little royal estate agent, Eamon Feeny, quickly in hand. When they reached Maguire's Ford several days later, she learned Feeny had driven off the villagers because they were Catholics. Jasmine had dismissed him on the spot, and sent the vicious bastard packing back to Belfast.

But Eamon Feeny had returned several months later with evil in his black heart. He had attempted to kill Jasmine, but had murdered her husband instead. They had caught him that same day. Jasmine, fierce as any Celtic warrior, had hanged him on the spot. Only when the devil breathed his last did she collapse with her overwhelming grief. They thought she was going to die for she lay unconscious for several days. Then her servant, Adali, the Indian in his neat white turban, and the priest, her own cousin, had come to Rory. She was, they told him, calling out for her husband in her anguish and heartbreak; and they feared she would put herself into the grave unless she could be made to believe that Rowan Lindley came into her bed again.

He was shocked by their suggestion. It was bad enough the servant made it, but that the priest would condone such a thing! But they assured him that she would die otherwise, and perhaps she would anyway.