Lots of outside obligations today and not much writing, but I did manage 2,264 words for a ten-day total of 29,766. So close to 30,000, so that’s tomorrow’s goal.

And here’s an excerpt from today’s work:

There was something refreshing about coming into an empty house. No questions to answer. No disapproving looks. She tried to feel sorry for Finnoula O’Saidh but knew Roisin would put her in charge of something appropriate. As long as it wasn’t Mai’s life, Mai was fine with whatever sinecure Roisin provided Finnoula.

Someone had been taking in the mail, though, but a note in the Library from Roisin explained that. Roisin had remained behind for a few days. Mai went through the house. No sign of Roisin’s having stayed here, and for that she was grateful.

Mai had started up the stairs with her bag when the front doorbell rang. She hesitated for a moment and smiled as she remembered she now had to answer her own door. My, didn’t that feel all grown up?

She didn’t expect to see Travers Brent there, but, then, she hadn’t called him the next day after the dinner fiasco, had she?

“Oh, god, Trav, I’ve been too busy to call. I’m so sorry,” she said. She stood back, opening the door wider for him to come in.

He stepped in, gave a look around the foyer, and stood for a moment in silence.

“So,” he began, as Mai closed the door, “has the cad won?”

“I’m afraid he has. I promise I was going to call you to have lunch. I wanted to tell you that much face-to-face,” she said.

The smile he gave her was genuinely sad. “Old girl, I think we would have been good together. Perhaps not at first, but we’d have grown into it.”

“That’s a horribly old-fashioned attitude, Trav, and one I’m not much in favor of. And, Trav, I know about your father’s money troubles,” she said. “I know that’s what it was about.”

“It was, indeed,” he said, and she hadn’t expected the honesty, “but I did discover I do like you. A great deal.”

“And you became likable, too.”

“But nothing more than that?” he asked, his smile even sadder.

“No, nothing more than that,” she replied.

“Well, then, I suppose we can’t call him the cad anymore, can we?” he asked.

“I’ll keep it in reserve, just in case,” she said.

“Excellent idea. Well, I stopped by to ask you to dinner, but I’ll just keep that in reserve.” He smiled at her, a nice smile, lighting up his handsome face. “Just in case.”

They shared a laugh, then a hug, and a light kiss, Mai breaking it off when he became insistent. She stood in the doorway and watched him jog down the steps to the Bentley with his driver waiting at the curb. Poor Trav, she thought, knowing it wouldn’t be a Bentley but a paddy wagon he’d be riding in next.