His Cinderella Heiress Read Online Free Page A

gazed around and thought how much work must have gone into keeping this room perfect. How could one woman do it?
    â€˜It’s grand,’ he told her, and took a mouthful of the truly excellent beef. ‘Wonderful.’
    â€˜I’m pleased. If there’s anything else...’
    â€˜There isn’t.’
    â€˜I don’t know where the woman is. The lawyer said mid-afternoon...’
    He still wasn’t quite sure who the woman was. Details from the lawyers had been sparse, to say the least. ‘The lawyer said you’d be expecting me mid-afternoon too,’ he said mildly, attacking a bit more of his beef. Yeah, the epergne was off-putting—were they tigers?—but this was excellent food. ‘Things happen.’
    â€˜Well,’ the woman said with sudden asperity, ‘she’s Fiona’s child. We could expect anything.’
    â€˜You realise I don’t know anything about her. I don’t even know who Fiona is,’ he told her and the housekeeper narrowed her eyes, as if asking, How could he not know? Her look said the whole world should know, and be shocked as well.
    â€˜Fiona was Lord Conaill’s only child,’ she said tersely. ‘His Lady died in childbirth. Fiona was a daughter when he wanted a son, but he gave her whatever she wanted. This would have been a cold place for a child and you can forgive a lot through upbringing, but Fiona had her chances and she never took them. She ran with a wild lot and there was nothing she wanted more than to shock her father. And us... The way she treated the servants... Dirt, we were. She ran through her father’s money like it was water, entertaining her no-good friends, having parties, making this place a mess, but His Lordship would disappear to his club in Dublin rather than stop her. She was a spoiled child and then a selfish woman. There were one too many parties, though. She died of a drug overdose ten years ago, with only His Lordship to mourn her passing.’
    â€˜And her child?’
    â€˜Lord Conaill would hardly talk of her,’ she said primly. ‘For his daughter to have a child out of wedlock... Eh, it must have hurt. Fiona threw it in his face over and over, but still he kept silent. But then he wouldn’t talk about you either and you were his heir. Is there anything else you’ll be needing?’
    â€˜No, thank you,’ Finn said. ‘Are you not eating?’
    â€˜In the kitchen, My Lord,’ she said primly. ‘It’s not my place to be eating here. I’ll be keeping another dinner hot for the woman, just in case, but if she’s like her mother we may never hear.’
    And she left him to his roast beef.
    For a while the meal took his attention—a man who normally cooked for himself was never one to be ignoring good food—but when it was finished he was left staring down the shining surface of the ostentatious table, at the pouncing tigers on the epergne, at his future.
    What to do with this place?
    Sell it? Why not?
    The inheritance had come out of the blue. Selling it would mean he could buy the farms bordering his, and the country down south was richer than here. He was already successful but the input of this amount of money could make him one of the biggest primary producers in Ireland.
    The prospect should make him feel on top of the world. Instead, he sat at the great, grand dining table and felt...empty. Weird.
    He thought of Maeve and he wondered if this amount of money would have made a difference.
    It wouldn’t. He knew it now. His life had been one of loyalty—eldest son of impoverished farmers, loyal to his parents, to his siblings, to his farm. And to Maeve.
    He’d spent twelve months realising loyalty was no basis for marriage.
    He thought suddenly of the woman he’d pulled out of the bog. He hoped she’d be safe and dry by now. He had a sudden vision of her, bathed and warmed, ensconced in a cosy pub by a fire,