The Golden Queen Read Free Page B

O’Rourke-smart as a bee’s sting, and a hardworking girl, too.”
    “Nooo, no!” Father Heany threw up his hands as if to ward off a blow. “You can’t go trying to unload your ugly niece onto the boy,” the priest said. “That would be a sin. She’s a nice enough girl, but with those buck teeth—”
    “You don’t say!” Seamus frowned in mock horror. “You daren’t talk about my niece that way!”
    “I will,” the priest said. “God agrees with me on this point, I’m sure. The girl has tusks as dangerous as any wild boar’s. Now, if Gallen is looking for a nice young woman, I’m sure others could be found.”
    Maggie got up from her churn. The cream had hardened to butter, and she could no longer turn the crank. Her face and arms were covered with perspiration. Gallen figured it must be midnight, yet she’d been working since before sunrise. She stood wearily, put a heavy log into the fire, then sat at a nearby table with a sigh that said, “Ah, to hell with it.”
    “Well, there is Maggie here,” Seamus said with a wink, and Gallen saw that he’d been planning this all along. With Gallen and Maggie sitting so close together, it was a perfect opportunity to torment them both. No one in town could have missed the glances they exchanged, and Gallen had just about decided that Maggie was the one for him. “Now, Maggie has it all—she has her wit, she’s a charmer, and she works as hard as three people.”
    “True, true,” Father Heany agreed.
    “And looks!” Seamus said. “More men come here to look at Maggie than ever came in for a drink! Why, if some boy were to marry her, it would deal a horrible blow to John Mahoney’s business. Sure, you’ll not find a better catch in all of County Morgan than Maggie Flynn.”
    “But …” Father Heany said with a sigh, “she’s too young. The poor girl is only sixteen.” He said it with such finality, Gallen knew it was more than a casual thought, it was a verdict. Father Heany was only repeating aloud in front of Gallen the things that others in town had decided in private.
    “Too young?” Seamus argued. “Why, she’s but two months away from her birthday!”
    The priest held up his hands. “Sixteen—even an old sixteen—is marginal, very marginal. Marrying a girl so young borders on sin, and I’d never perform the ceremony!” he declared. “Now, if you ask me—and I’m sure the scriptures would back me up on it—eighteen is far more respectable! But if you make a woman wait until she’s twenty, then it seems to me you’re sinning the other way and ought to be roundly chastised for making the lady wait.”
    Seamus raised his brow, gave Gallen a look that said, “You can’t argue with a priest,” then drained his glass. Maggie got up to refill it, but Seamus shooed her away with a wave. “So, that’s how you feel about it, Father Heany,” Seamus said as he hitched his pants and strolled to the bar. “Well, all I can say is that it’s growing mighty cold in this corner of the room, so I think I’ll sit me by the fire and leave the young ones be.”
    Seamus filled his mug, then sat at a table nearer to the fire. Father Heany and Orick followed, leaving Gallen alone. Father Heany took up a fiddle and began playing a mournful tune appropriate for a cold night. Maggie sat down next to Gallen. He put his arm around her shoulders, and as soon as Seamus had his back turned, she glanced around the room quickly to make sure no one was looking, then nipped Gallen’s ear.
    “Gallen O’Day,” she whispered fiercely, “why don’t you come up to my room? I’ll let you play on my feather bolster, and you can undress me with your teeth.”
    “What?” he whispered, feeling blood rush to his ears. “You’ve got to be joking! You could have a baby from that. You wouldn’t want to get tied down with children so young.”
    “I’m old enough to cook and clean from sunrise to sunset for a bunch of dirty beggars who give me no