“Well, there you have it!” Deirdre chuckled. “He’s handsome and a friend of Mr. King, which means he’s also rich, isn’t he? Why would someone like that take a liking to a random blind woman in some backwater village? It’s just weird! I mean, I doubt his disability hardly hurt his desirability. I wouldn’t meet his standard even if he lowered it!”“Lord, I swear…” Madame Russell faltered. How was she supposed to tell her about Kyran’s stormy scowl the moment she emphasized on Deirdre being hers?And which handsome, rich Prince Charming would deign himself with menial labor for a woman he just met? Aristocrats like these probably lived their entire lives without ever touching any kind of work tool!“Come on, Madame Russell.” Deirdre cooed reassuringly. She wrapped her arm around the older woman’s. “Mr. Reed accidentally injured my forehead last night, so today, he came to apologize and help to make it up for me. He’s not interested in me, okay? And it’s impossible, too. My conditions a
To Eilis’ credit, she would not let some old woman walk all over her. Scowling, she rebuked, “Oh, really? Your Bobby is also the same gremlin who stole O’Connor’s harvest and beat up other kids every few days in a week, ain’t he? How many people complained to the village head about this? I lost count. Now you’re telling me the same lad is somehow incapable of lying?”Mrs. Boebert’s eyes widened in rage. Livid, she knocked over their potatoes to the ground.Glaring, Eilis yelled, “What the heck!?”Everyone in the village knew just how much trouble Mrs. Boebert posed. She had always been the type to bully others with her seniority. “You just accused my grandson without proof, Eilis!” Mrs. Boebert shrieked. She yanked Bobby’s arm and pulled him into the fray, her wrinkled finger training at a little sore spot on his forehead. “You see this? Bobby has never—I say never!—been bullied by anyone all his life, so how about one of you do some explaining right now before I drag this out all
Few could endure the optics of a bawling old woman. Naturally, some of the bystanders were compelled to mediate.“Come on, Eilis! Look at Mrs. Boebert. She’s so old and can barely walk on her own these days. You can’t possibly think she came to you, despite the difficulty, just so she could slander you in public, right?“Besides, nobody wants an unresolvable conflict among ourselves, right? This is a small place, Eilis. Tell, uh, that girl to apologize and get this over with.”“Amen to that! We are a tight-knit community. We know everyone here, drink the same water, and live under the same sky. It doesn’t do any of us good if the community splits because of something so trivial, right? Something as trivial as picking a fight with a little kid, too! If I may be frank, Eilis, do you really think that young lass is as trustworthy as you hope?”Their comments were like thorns stinging Deirdre’s chest. Eilis, however, was having none of it. “That’s enough!” She erupted in rage.Even
Mrs. Boebert was shocked. She could not even find the words to refute them. “W-Why you—”Suddenly, a steady rhythm of footsteps approached them. Declan King’s jocular tone sounded. “Whoa! What’s going on here? Are you guys having a party here?”Deirdre clenched her fists instinctively. She could not help but be worried. Kyran could not possibly be with him, right? If he were… Bobby might suddenly switch his target and name Kyran, the culprit. Then, because the young man was mute, Mrs. Boebert would bulldoze him even harder with a one-sided argument!To Deirdre’s relief, Declan added, “Okay. Why does everyone look so intense? Is this because I’m crashing the party or something?”He said ‘I’, not ‘we.’ Declan was alone this time.Mrs. Boebert had seized the chance to slink away from the fray with Bobby in tow. Maybe she was afraid of taking up Deirdre’s medical costs after all. Either way, the rest of the crowd broke off soon enough, leaving a slightly nonplussed Declan with Deirdre
No, it was not because she had the compassion of the Virgin Mary. Nope, it was definitely not because her heart bled for the pitiful and destitute. She only agreed to join the party as a form of thanks. Yeap, definitely as a form of thanks for those two times Kyran helped her. Deirdre had received Tobey’s call by the time she got out of the vehicle. Standing by the roadside, she could not help but note the fatigue in Tobey’s voice, no matter how gentle he was. “Going to a dinner tonight with my mom, Dee?”Deirdre was not surprised that he knew. Madame Russell must have told him. “Yeah.”“Okay. Be careful, please. Don’t drink. If I recall correctly, you aren’t exactly a drinker. Just tell them you’re allergic to alcohol, and they will definitely leave you alone in fear.” Tobey quipped. “Go home as soon as it’s over, please.”“I know, Toby. I know.” She chirped. His voice was reassuring—the way a kind-hearted big brother’s was. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure your mom won’t drink too
The stairs proved themselves to be almost a little too fancy. Sometimes it was a wide, flat platform. Sometimes, it had a series of narrow steps. And that was not counting the twists and bends, too!Deirdre was hopeless against the stairs’ unpredictable aesthetics. She finally miscalculated and missed her step. Before she fell, though, she felt a firm hand holding her tightly by her waist. It was warm and strong, and it helped her regain her footing. Deirdre immediately knew it belonged to Kyran.Eilis panicked so hard that her face turned white. She only sighed in relief when she saw Deirdre was all right. Patting her chest, she cried, “Thank God you’re here, Mr. Reed! Thank you! She could have seriously hurt herself if she fell from here!”Declan snickered. “Well, it’s not like Kyran’s famous for being seriously meticulous and observant… Or that he’s been quietly guarding Miss McKinnon’s six… Or that he’s readied himself to catch her the moment she trips, right?” he teased.D
A villager thought he was familiar with Deirdre and impolitely stuffed a glass of beer into her hand. “Come on! Let’s make a toast. If mountain tourism booms, and we build some kind of resort, our Village Alnwick will become famous! With this, we shall celebrate!”Deirdre was put in an awkward situation because she couldn’t drink.Because Eilis wasn’t around, Deirdre hesitated. It took her a while before she finally decided to ask, “I’m sorry. I can’t drink. Can I replace the beer with tea instead?”“Replace the beer with tea?” The man grimaced as he insisted, “How can you not know how to drink when you’ve been out of the village for so long? Are you trying to despise me for refusing the drink I offer?”“No, I don’t mean it!”“Drink if you don’t mean it!” demanded Archie. “What are you afraid of? It’s just half a glass of beer. Moreover, no one would molest you if you were drunk.” Archie scoffed.Archie ended up bursting out into such boisterous and contagious laughter that the o
Deirdre picked up the pastry with her hand. When she was about to put it into her mouth, a sudden force hit the pastry on her hand, making her heart skip a beat.Eilis was stupefied. “What’s the matter?” Kyran didn’t say anything when he took away the plate of pastries.This incident, however minor, had attracted much attention.“What’s happening?” asked someone.Even Deirdre was dumbfounded. It was obvious that Kyran didn’t want her to have that pastry, but she didn’t understand why.An inexplicable sense of suspicion gushed out from the bottom of her heart.Everyone grimaced at the interlude and jokingly said that Kyran loved that pastry so much that he took them all away.“Nah, do you think Mr. Reed is like you?” A man jeered. “Did you see the watch on his wrist? It’s a watch that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. How could such a person be interested in that low-cost pastry? I think he simply wanted to get the waiter to change to another dish just because he saw no o