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Lady. Deciding that few would know what was going on in the town better than a bartender, he dropped back into the pub.
    “So, has anyone in this town actually ever seen the Lady?” he asked Patrick Brennan, who was back behind his bar.
    “I personally only know the stories second-and third-hand,” Patrick said. “But there are those who have more familiarity with the subject.”
    “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share names?”
    “As it happens, I suspect Patrick would be referring to me,” a man sitting next to him at the bar commented. He held out a hand. “Michael Joyce. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
    The name was instantaneously recognizable. Duncan narrowed his eyes and studied the man dressed in jeans, work boots, and a black fisherman’s sweater more closely. His hair was shot with strands of silver, and his features were more chiseled than the ones on the back of his award-winning books, but it was a face that Duncan knew well.
    “Word gets around fast.”
    “It does, indeed,” Patrick said as he dipped a pint glass into some sudsy water in the sink behind the bar. “Though, in this case, it’s not so much local gossip as for the fact that you happen to be speaking with your landlord.”
    Okay. That was unexpected. “ You own Briarwood Cottage?”
    “That and a few others,” Michael Joyce said as he lowered a heavy mug of coffee to the bar. “As much as I enjoy farming, during the winter months when the land lies fallow, I found myself getting restive. So, I began restoring—”
    “More like rebuilding from a rubble pile,” Patrick Brennan interjected.
    “I was fortunate to have your brother doing most of the building while I served as a laborer,” Michael responded to Patrick. “Bram’s more than just a contractor. The way he can re-envision a famine cottage, keeping the historical bones while making it livable again, reminds me of those cathedral builders of old.”
    “Don’t be telling him that,” Patrick said. “He can be insufferable enough to live with.”
    The laugh they shared suggested a long and close friendship. A revolving door of first boarding schools and later Duncan’s vagabond life had precluded such relationships. There were many other reporters he was friendly with, but none he could actually call friends. He’d always been a loner.
    Until Cass. Who’d been not only the woman he loved but his one true friend. Which was why, on the anniversary of their meeting this week, he’d admittedly gone off the rails and ended up in that brawl. Yet, showing the serendipitous nature of life, hadn’t that tumble brought him here to Ireland? Even if he’d searched the entire world, he couldn’t have found a better location to remind his wife of the connection they’d once shared.
    “I’m impressed,” he said, returning to the conversation. “It’s obviously not new construction, but no way would I have guessed that it dates back to the 1800s.”
    “It does indeed,” Joyce said. “That cottage, like Fair Haven, which was the first I restored, once belonged to my family. As did the castle, in ancient times. Though it’s true enough that some of the famine homes Bram and I have been salvaging were little more than ruins from a tragic time.”
    “When their occupants left either on death carts to be put in the ground or coffin ships across the Atlantic to Canada and America,” Patrick said.
    “Or Australia, often for the so-called crime of stealing a loaf of bread or rasher of bacon to feed a starving family.” An apple-cheeked man who brought to mind an ancient leprechaun sitting on the other side of Joyce joined the conversation. From his sour tone, he could have been talking about an event that had occurred yesterday, which wasn’t all that surprising, since Duncan had discovered early in his career that displaced populations tended to have very long memories.
    “There are also those who’d be telling you that many of the residents