The Prince I Love to Hate: A Steamy Romantic Comedy (The Heir Affair Book 1) by Iris Morland (book club recommendations txt) 📕

Dim lights turned on as I walked. I stopped a few times to admire artwork hanging on the walls. Some were more traditional paintings of what I guessed were Irish landscapes. Others were more avant garde, splotches of color that weren’t depicting anything except maybe chaos. Looking at one that could’ve been painted by my four-year-old niece Fiona, I had a distinct feeling that Grandda wasn’t the one buying these pieces. He would’ve hated this one.

I wandered for a while longer, coming to a hallway I hadn’t been down. As I walked, I saw that a door was open, and I peered inside to see a library. The moon was the only light, although more lights turned on as I began to wander the aisles.

Had my grandda been a big reader? I wondered. One aisle had books that were all written in Irish. I pulled one out, curious, but my Irish was rudimentary at best, and I could hardly read a heavy tome that seemed to be about Ireland’s flora and fauna.

Other aisles had books in English, most of which seemed to be nonfiction: natural history of Ireland, Catholic treatises, and a variety of Bibles were all collected together. I did finally find a section of fiction, most of the authors being Irish—James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde were all there.

I pulled out a collection of Yeats’ poems. I flipped it open to find an inscription at the front in Irish that I was able to translate: to my beloved Maire, Sean. I knew that Maire was the Irish version of Mary.

My heart started pounding. It felt like kismet, coming upon this book dedicated to my grandmother after that strange conversation I’d had with Mrs. Walsh.

I flipped through the pages, and my heart nearly fell to my toes when a note fluttered to the floor. I grabbed it, noting that edges were yellow with age. I carefully unfolded it after I’d set the book down on a nearby table.

I squinted at the handwriting. It was in Irish, I realized, so I could only make out a few words that I remembered learning as a child. Liam could still speak Irish; he’d lived here in Ireland until he was twenty-three. Whereas I’d left when I was only six and he’d placed me in the care of my uncle Henry and aunt Siobhan, Siobhan being our mother’s younger sister. Siobhan had never learned Irish, and I’ll admit, I hadn’t had much discipline to take classes when I was younger.

Now I desperately wished I’d learned the language. The letter was from my grandmother Mary to Sean, dated over seventy years ago.

I carefully folded the letter up again and placed it back inside the book. I would take a photo of it and send it to Liam to see if he could read it and translate it for me. I had no idea how good his reading skills in Irish were these days. For all I knew, he could only speak it and understand it orally.

I could always try to translate it myself, I reasoned. I mean, did I really want Liam involved? He might not be all that gung-ho about a letter written to our grandda, unless the contents were basically the Irish version of “go fuck yourself.”

Well, Google Translate could at least give me the gist of it, I told myself.

Snagging the book, I was about to go back to my room when I heard a noise to my left. I hadn’t realized that there was a smaller wooden door, partially open, that led to another part of the library.

I heard another noise, and my heart started pounding. I considered just scurrying back to my room, but a part of me felt stupid for being afraid. It could just be a rat or this old house creaking from the wind. It’s probably ghosts, my mind whispered, only half-joking.

I opened the small door. There were no lights on in the room, although I couldn’t tell if the lights installed were motion-detected like the ones in the hallways. I listened intently, still clutching the books of Yeats’ poems, when I heard a thump.

I froze. It was the middle of the night. Would any of the workers even be here at this hour? Despite its Downton Abbey feel, the estate didn’t actually house the people who worked here, at least according to the butler Roger, whose name I’d finally learned today. He’d told me that everyone returned home by the end of the day like any other employee going home from the office. The exception being the lone security guard that sat in a tiny office at the front gate, waving people in without so much as looking up from his iPad.

I waited, listening intently. And then I heard the squeak of door hinges, and then it was complete silence.

Who knew how long I stood there in the dark, clutching my book, my heart hammering in my throat? When I finally told myself that whoever had been in here was gone, I practically ran back to my room and bolted the door behind me.

Maybe Roger hadn’t meant that every single person went home? There could still be someone working here. Maybe it had been the security guard. But why would he be in the library? That made no sense.

Shivering, I got in bed, pulled the covers up to my chin, and failed miserably to fall asleep.

Chapter Four

The next morning, I considered calling Liam to tell him about the stranger in the library but then thought better of it. My older brother was way overprotective. Knowing him, he’d fly straight here to pummel somebody—anybody.

Instead, I called Rachel, who’d been my roommate my last two years at Harvard and who now lived in New York City with her girlfriend Maddie. She was one of the most levelheaded people I knew. I could tell her that I’d met five blue aliens and we’d all gotten high on bath salts and eaten our weight in fish and chips, and she