If Aidan intended Gallagher's to go on-and he did-he would have to think about finding himself a woman and going about the business of making a son-or a daughter, for that matter, as he wasn't so entrenched in tradition he couldn't see passing what he had on to a girl.

But there was time for that, thank Jesus. After all, he was only thirty-one, and he didn't intend to marry just for responsibility. There would be love, and passion, and the meeting of minds before there were vows.

One of the things he'd learned on his travels was what a man could settle for, and what he couldn't. You could settle for a lumpy bed if the alternative was the floor, and be grateful. But you couldn't settle for a woman who bored you or failed to stir your blood, no matter how fair her face.

As he was thinking that, he turned and looked out over the roll of land, over to the soft rise where the white cottage sat under the sky and stars. There was a thin haze of smoke rising from the chimney, a single light burning against the window.

Jude Frances Murray, he thought and found himself bringing her face into his mind. What are you doing in your little house on the faerie hill? Reading a good book perhaps, one with plenty of weight and profound messages. Or do you sneak into a story with fun and foolishness when no one's around to see?

It's image that worries you, he mused. That much he'd gotten from the hour or so she'd spent on one of his stools. What are people thinking? What do they see when they look at you?

And while she was thinking that, he mused, she was absorbing everything around her that she could see or hear. He doubted she knew it, but he'd seen it in her eyes.

He thought he would take some time to find out what he thought of her, what he saw in her, and what was real.

She'd already stirred his blood with those big sea goddess eyes of hers and that sternly bound hair. He liked her voice, the preciseness of it that seemed so intriguingly at odds with the shyness.

What would she do, pretty Jude, he wondered, if he was to ramble over now and rap on her door?

No point in frightening her to death, he decided, just because he was restless and something about her had made him want.

"Sleep well, then,'' he murmured, sliding his hands into his pockets as the wind whirled around him. "One night when I go walking it won't be to the cliffs, but to your door. Then we'll see what we see."

A shadow passed the window, and the curtain twitched aside. There she stood, almost as if she'd heard him. It was too far away for him to see more than the shape of her, outlined against the light.

He thought she might see him as well, just a shadow on the cliffs.

Then the curtain closed again, and moments later, the light went out.

CHAPTER Four

Reliability, Jude told herself, began with responsibility. And both were rooted in discipline. With this short lecture in her head, she rose the next morning, prepared a simple breakfast, then took a pot of tea up to her office to settle down and work.

She would not go outside and take a walk over the hills, though it was a perfectly gorgeous day. She would not wander out to dream over the flowers, no matter how pretty they looked out the window. And she certainly wasn't going to drive into the village and spend an hour or two roaming the beach, however compelling the idea.

Though many might consider her notion of exploring the legends handed down from generation to generation in Ireland a flighty idea at best, it was certainly viable work if approached properly and with clear thinking. The oral storytelling art, as well as the written word, was one of the cornerstones in the foundation of culture, after all.

She couldn't bring herself to acknowledge that her most hidden, most secret desire was to write. To write stories, books, to simply open that carefully locked chamber in her heart and let the words and images rush out.

Whenever that lock rattled, she reminded herself it was an impractical, romantic, even foolish ambition. Ordinary people with average skills were better off contenting themselves with the sensible.

Researching, detailing, analyzing were sensible, things she'd been trained to do. Things, she thought with only a whisper of resentment, she'd been expected to do. The subject matter she'd selected was rebellion enough. So she would explore the psychological reason for the formation and perpetuation of the generational myths particular to the country of her ancestors.

Ireland was ripe with them.

Ghosts and banshees, pookas and faeries. What a rich and imaginative wonder was the Celtic mind! They said the cottage stood on a faerie hill, one of the magic spots that hid the gleaming raft below.

If memory served, she thought the legend went that a mortal could be lured, or even snatched, into the faerie world below the hill and kept there for a hundred years.

And wasn't that fascinating?

Seemingly rational, ordinary people on the cusp of the twenty-first century could actually make such a statement without guile.

That, she decided, was the power of the myth on the intellect, and the psyche.

And it was strong enough, powerful enough, that for a little while, when she'd been alone in the night, she'd almost-almost believed it. The music of the wind chimes and the wind had added to it, she thought now. Songs, she mused, played by the air were meant to set the mind dreaming.

Then that figure standing out on the cliffs. The shadow of a man etched against sky and sea had drawn her gaze and caused her heart to thunder. He might have been a man waiting for a lover, or mourning one. A faerie prince weaving magic into the sea.

Very romantic, she decided, very powerful.

And of course-obviously-whoever it had been, whoever would walk wind-whipped cliffs after midnight, was lunatic. But she hadn't thought of that until morning, for the punch of the image had her sighing and shivering over it into the night.

But the lunacy, for lack of a better word, was part of the charm of the people and their stories. So she would use it. Explore it. Immerse herself in it.

Revved, she turned to her machine, leaving the tapes and letters alone for the moment, and started her paper.

They say the cottage stands on a faerie hill, one of the many rises of land in Ireland under which the faeries live in their palaces and castles. It's said that if you approach a faerie hill, you may hear the music that plays in the great hall of the castle under the deep green grass. And if you walk over one, you take the risk of being snatched by the faeries themselves and becoming obliged to do their bidding.

She stopped, smiled. Of course that was all too lyrical and, well, Irish a beginning for a serious academic paper. In her first year of college, her papers had been marked down regularly for just that sort of thing. Rambling, not following the point of the theme, neglecting to adhere to her own outlines.

Knowing just how important grades were to her parents, she'd learned to stifle those colorful journeys.

Still, this wasn't for a grade, and it was just a draft. She'd clean it up later. For now, she decided, she would just get her thoughts down and lay the foundation for the analysis.

She knew enough, from her grandmother's stories, to give a brief outline of the most common mythical characters. It would be her task to find the proper stories and the structure that revolved around each character of legend and then explain its place in the psychology of the people who fostered it.

She worked through the morning on basic definitions, often adding a subtext that cross-referenced the figure to its counterpart in other cultures.

Intent on her work, she barely heard the knocking on the front door, and when it registered she blinked her way out of an explanation of the Pisogue, the Irish wise woman found in most villages in earlier times. Hooking her glasses in the neck of her sweater, she hurried downstairs. When she opened the door, Brenna O'Toole was already walking back to her truck.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," Brenna began.

"No, you're not." How could a woman wearing muddy work boots intimidate her? Jude wondered. "I was in the little room upstairs. I'm glad you stopped by. I didn't thank you properly the other day."

"Oh, it's not a problem. You were asleep on your feet." Brenna stepped away from the gate, walked back toward the stoop. "Are you settling in, then? You have all you need?"

"Yes, thanks." Jude noticed that the faded cap Brenna squashed down over her hair carried a small winged figure pinned just over the bill. More faeries, Jude thought, and found it fascinating that such an efficient woman would wear one as a charm.

"Ah, would you like to come in, have some tea?"

"That would be lovely, thanks, but I've work." Still,

Brenna seemed content to linger on the little garden path. "I only wanted to stop and see if you're finding your way about, or if there's anything you'd be needing. I'm back and forth on the road here a time or two a day."

"I can't think of anything. Well, actually, I wonder if you can tell me who I contact about getting a telephone jack put into the second bedroom. I'm using it as an office, and I'll need that for my modem."

"Modem, is it? Your computer?" Now her eyes gleamed with interest. "My sister Mary Kate has a computer as she's studying programming in school. You'd think she'd discovered the cure for stupidity with the thing, and she won't let me near it."

"Are you interested in computers?"

"I like knowing how things work, and she's afraid I'll take it apart-which of course I would, for how else can you figure out how a thing works, after all? She has a modem as well, and sends messages to some cousins of ours in New York and friends in Galway. It's a marvel."