Don’t look at him.
Look at me.
Finally, she did, and it was like watching the sun rise. All warmth and light and beauty. “Are you hungry, Tadhg?” she asked.
“Ravenous.”
“What would you like to eat?”
Padraig shot me a glare that probably should’ve worried me since he could borrow that cursed blade any minute. “Funny you should ask—”
“Master Tadhg told me he wanted soup,” Padraig blurted.
Keelynn’s brows pulled together. My fingers itched to smooth the small crease between them. “Soup?”
I patted my stomach. “Warm and wet. What’s not to love?”
I thought poor Padraig would have apoplexy.
Her slim shoulders lifted in a shrug. “All right . . . soup it is.”
Each pub we tried was packed to the gills, overflowing with drunks and merrymakers, and one opportunistic pickpocket making the most of the festivities. I knew where we could go but wasn’t sure Keelynn would approve. Thanks to my heroics this afternoon, she may have warmed to me, but that didn’t mean she’d feel comfortable in one of the few Danú establishments in town.
After hearing Padraig grumbling about being turned away from yet another pub, I couldn’t take it anymore. “I know a place that shouldn’t be crowded at this hour.” If Keelynn didn’t want to go, then she could starve waiting in line with the rest of the humans.
Keelynn’s hand fell to her stomach, her face and lips pale. “Is it far?”
“Not very. Come on.” I didn’t mean to brush against her when I passed. A simple accident caused by a puddle, a few loose stones, and a man stumbling from the pub next to us. The moment my arm grazed hers, it was like someone had splashed me with hot ash.
I skirted away as quickly as I could, but not before receiving another glare from Padraig. It had to be witch hazel, right? There was no other explanation for the way she made me burn.
* * *
Maeve’s bar, located at the back of an alley behind the apothecary, hadn’t changed in fifty years. Benches and trestle tables, three taps behind the bar, and a whitewashed fireplace with a fire that needed no fuel but never went out.
Padraig sat his glass aside to offer Maeve a crooked smile, leaving the owner blushing like a maiden. “Why don’t ye give yer pegs a break and have a seat beside me?” he suggested, tapping the cards in his breast pocket. “We can play a game of quadrille.”
A game of quadrille. Was that what they were calling it these days? I hid my smile in my pint.
“We close in an hour,” she told him. “If yer still here, I’ll play with ye.” Maeve flicked her tea towel over her shoulder, then went about removing the empty glasses between us.
And the old man had given me shite about flirting with Keelynn.
“Did you know my first love was a faerie?” he said after a deep drink of his fresh pint, wiping white foam from his whiskers with his shirtsleeve.
Keelynn turned toward him and frowned.
I knew most of the faeries on this island, but the old man must have been at least four times my age. “What was her name?”
“She was called Binne.” The tapping of Padraig’s pipe punctuated his words.
Ah, Binne.
Beautiful.
Wicked sense of humor.
Helluva voice.