Free The Kilternan Legacy by Anne McCaffrey

to write her. She’d be highly entertained. And at this distance she couldn’t match-make very actively. But such thoughts were not soothing me to sleep.
    I went back to the kitchen and started the kettle. A hot toddy might help. Damn! No whiskey. Well, hot milk would be okay.
    The pots fell out of the cupboard with a clatter. I nearly joined them when I heard a tap at the back door.
    “Whoooo … who is it?”
    “Kieron T’ornton, Mrs. Teasey.”
    “Oh, good grief! Come in.”
    As he entered, he looked down at the door latch. “You’d best be locking that door at night, Mrs. Teasey. We’ve a lot of tinkers on the long acre, and you could lose the best things in the house for sleeping.”
    I stood there, pot in hand, staring at him because he’d a brown bottle, unmistakably the kind which held spirits, in his hand. He noticed my gaze and grinned.
    “The bahbee’s teething, and a little of this helps.”
    “I’m not teething, but if you could spare a thimbleful…”
    He strode into the room, looking blockier and shaggier than ever in the small space.
    “If you’ll permit me to drink with you? A pretty woman shouldn’t ever have to drink alone.” Then he chuckled. “That’s what I’d tell your aunt.”
    “My aunt drank?”
    He threw back his head to roar with laughter, but I made hushing noises and pointed up to indicate he shouldn’t wake my kids. He covered his mouth until the laughter subsided. “Sure and she did!”
    “Hmm. I didn’t mean to imply that she was prudish … but somehow one doesn’t think of old-lady aunts as drinkers.”
    “Don’t think of your great-aunt Irene as an old-lady aunt,” and there was strong feeling in the grin on his face. “She was a grand gal. Had she been younger or I older …” He gave me a mischievous wink and, with accustomed ease, slipped into a chair at the small table.
    Strangely enough, I didn’t feel the least bit embarrassed by Kieron Thornton’s presence in my kitchen. What harm could I come to with a man who succored teething babies and distraught mothers at all hours?
    “Is it Ann Purdee’s baby?” I asked. He hesitated before he said, “Poor little tike.”
    Then I nearly let the milk boil over, because it suddenly struck me as odd that Kieron Thornton was at Ann Purdee’s. Had she no husband?
    “She’s no man in the house, you know,” he said in a slow drawl, and I wondered if I’d been thinking aloud again. “Which is as well,” he added slowly, his eyes on mine. “One more such beating and there’d’ve been bloody little left of her, there being not much of her except willpower anyway.”
    “She dropped in on us this afternoon,” I said, matching his casualness. “To pay the rent.”
    He caught and held my eyes. “
You’ve
no objection to her staying on then?” There was something he didn’t add.
    I shook my head, and he smiled with relief and approval.
    “There’s a story about Ann Purdee?”
    “I’m not wide in the mouth, Mrs. Teasey, not about other people’s affairs, Irene, your aunt, was satisfied, let’s say, and helped out a bit now and again. No more than was neighborlylike.”
    I caught the hint and nodded. Ann Purdee had already struck me as a proud person whom well-meant but ill-timed generosities could wound deeply.
    “I’m pleased you thought to move in right away,” he said, taking a judicious sip of the hot milk and whiskey. “Hmmm. Very tasty.” I’d doctored it with a bit of nutmeg and sugar. “Possession is nine points of the law in any country.”
    “And there’ll be trouble?”
    “Have you spoken with Mihall Noonan?”
    “Yes, for all the good it did. I’m just as confused. And then, my aunt left a letter of instruction.”
    He was nodding, so I gathered he’d known about it. After all, Mr. Noonan had said he’d saved her life.
    “Do you think,” I asked him urgently, “that there’ll be trouble with the relatives?”
    “Not to worry, Mrs. Teasey. You were always to inherit, or