Niall said solemnly, “And though I was not permitted to escort her, the duke made it clear in no uncertain terms that I must ensure her safety while she is dealing with her errant husband.”
“Does he think I will harm her?”
Niall shrugged. “Who am I to say what the duke thinks. He charged me to bring her back again safely when you--as he is certain you will do--fail her in person, rather than in absentia this time.”
Sean bit back an angry retort. The duke’s charge was only the truth, after all.
His uncle spoke, a dangerously thoughtful expression on his face. “Still, providence has dropped her in our laps, and the duke would not dare harm Sean while he holds his wife here…”
Sean made a sound of protest, but his uncle ignored him and continued, “…as is his legal right, even if she has come against his wishes and his will.”
He stood up, intent upon cutting off the discussion as soon as possible. “I didn’t bring her here. But I’ll be the one sending her home--and right away.”
Niall did not seem to take the hint. “If you can convince her.”
He glanced at Niall, wishing his cousin was speaking anything but the truth. “What words will soothe her pricks and send her home?”
“Simple ones, I should think, cousin.” Niall grinned. “Either that you intend to head straight to London and take up the life you abandoned five years ago—or that you’ve died and gone straight to Hades with no chance of pardon from St. Peter.”
For a brief moment he considered pretending to have died, but he abandoned the absurd idea almost immediately. She would demand proof-and a dead man could not be divorced. “Her timing is not the best. She cannot stay--she might inadvertently discover what we’re doing and who knows what she’d do then.”
“Perhaps she would admire you. She did want you to display an absence of fear, didn’t she?” Niall’s cheek twitched, but otherwise he showed no expression of his annoyance. “And your recent activities are so very mad they could only be performed by a man without fear.”
An absence of fear. He had done so many foolish things to prove himself to her. And now-- “That was five years ago. I doubt any display of courage I could show would appease her now.” Belatedly, Sean remembered how resentful his cousin had been at being relegated to London to keep Kate distracted while Sean got to play an Irish version of Robin Hood and help even the score between the Irish and the English just a little.
Surprisingly, Niall smiled and said flatly, “She wouldn’t turn you in to the Crown.”
He supposed his bride wouldn’t be pleased at the jealous surge that shook him. His cousin spoke with such certainly about the wife Sean himself had not seen for too many years. “She may very well, if she doesn’t like what we’re doing.” Despite Niall’s certainty, it was a risk Sean was not willing to take.
“No doubt you could use your persuasive skills to convince her that you are a hero. After all, your letters used to put a glow in her eyes for days.”
Sean felt a tug at his heart to hear that confidence. “She’s not likely to understand--not given her life of privilege or her English heritage.”
Niall shrugged, unwilling to argue the matter, as usual. “Perhaps she’d speak to the duke on your behalf, as Father suggested?”
“Excellent suggestion, lad.”
“No, Uncle.” Sean decided not to keep the truth from Conner any longer. “She will come. I will soothe her pride, if I can. But she will know that I will divorce her, and then she will go home resigned to the fact I am needed here more than I am in London.”
“Divorce?” Connor frowned. “Foolish action, that, making an enemy of the duke.”
“I have no need for the alliances of English dukes or the House of Lords, either. I’ve chosen the other path. I thought you were pleased by my choice.”
“I can understand why you might want to rid yourself of a useless wife.” His uncle shook his head and sighed. “But to cut yourself off from a ready source of funds…“
“She is not a useless wife.” Sean wondered what his uncle would advise if he knew what had accumulated from Kate’s cultivation of roses? He could guess--so he said nothing of it. “She was a wife for the man I wanted to become, not for the man I have decided to be.”
“The duke is already alienated,“ Niall said firmly. “He has already begun looking into how to protect his wife’s youngest sister from the harm to her reputation.”
He hoped Niall did not know of her business, he would tell his father and then Sean would never hear the end of it. But Kate did not deserve to have him leave her destitute. He sighed.
Kate. Here. For a brief, cowardly, moment he wished for urgent business in another part of the county. He could handle her--but he did not look forward to sending her away with a bruised and battered heart. He could think of no gentle way to ease her pride and still continue on with his plans.
It didn’t help that he had a fierce desire to see her again. He’d thought he’d put her behind him. Signing the papers to begin the divorce suit had caused him only a few faint twinges. But now, knowing that she was on her way and would soon be on his doorstep, his heart raced and his blood was fevered.
All for a woman he had decided to divorce. A woman he hadn’t seen in five years. A woman he hadn’t even bedded on his wedding night. He sighed. Perhaps that was the problem, then. The possibility of seeing her awakened the thought of business he had left long unfinished and thought himself content to do without.
He held Niall back for a private word, after his uncle had left the room to check the horses were saddled for their latest foray into the countryside. “Are you certain she will come?”
Niall smiled. “Only the burning of all ships ever made would keep her from our shore, cousin. She is convinced she can change your mind with her sweet words.”
“Damn.” Sweet words? Kate? Somehow he doubted it. He looked around the ramshackle abbey. “What shall I do, then? She cannot stay here.”
“Don’t worry, Sean. Your wife thinks of you as that charming rogue who swept her off her feet so long ago. No doubt if you show her the man you have become, she will beg to be divorced from you, and plead with me to take her home, damn the damage to her reputation. Perhaps then she might even favor me with her affections, as you had hoped.”
Sean buried the anger that threatened to erupt. “You sound as though you’d like to be her savior.”
“Why shouldn’t I? She’s a beautiful, spirited woman who’s been faithful for far too long to a man who wishes she’d fall off the face of the earth.”
“I wish her no harm.”
“And she wishes you none, cousin. She merely wants to correct this misunderstanding between you.”
“You did not read her last letter, then, if you think she does not wish me harm. She demanded I arrive for Christmas. Demanded. Or she would move herself across the sea to be with me.”
“Perhaps she might fit here, Sean. Have you thought of that?”
“You can’t be serious? An Englishwoman? Here? Do you want to hang?”
“She’d brighten the place until then, at least.” Niall replied flippantly.
“Have I more cause to press this suit than I thought?” Sean asked with sudden unpleasant suspicion.
But his cousin was in no mood to indulge him. He shrugged, “I’ll let your bride answer that question, Sean. She should be here soon enough.”
After disembarking from her ship, Kate found herself reevaluating the wisdom of her decision to travel alone, with only a maid, who was more than a little afraid of the Irish ‘divvils.’
“I’m afraid for my life, my lady—and yours too,” Sarah said with a quavering as they looked about for a carriage.
“We are stout enough at heart, Sarah, we shall be fine. But here, take this to give you courage.” Kate gave her a little dagger to ease her mind, hoping that some helpful lad did not find it stuck between his ribs for no better reason than a maid’s faint heart and suspicious mind.
She hired a carriage from the friendliest driver she could find--which wasn’t saying much, they were all fairly taciturn once they found out where she wanted to go. But a few extra coins got her acquiescence if not exuberance. Sarah, she noticed, kept the knife clasped in her fist until they were well away from the docks.
As she stared at the rude huts dotting the landscape on the rackety ride, she began to wonder in horror whether he had an estate, or just another windowless cottage, as so many here lived in. He was an earl, surely he had a more sturdy abode.
A sudden memory of his frayed collar and cuffs assailed her. Of him, proud and pleased with himself the morning he had climbed in her window. He had never made it a secret that her dowry would be welcome, but she began to suspect that his need had gone beyond desperate and into the realm of dire.
Everyone knew one part of the story--how his ancestor had lost their holdings in Ireland and how his father had gained a title by saving Prince George’s life when he foiled a secret plot abroad. There had been some mention of lands, but she thought that those had been purchased by Sean’s father. Or was it is uncle?
The castle and the extensive lands that his ancestor had lost in Elizabeth’s day had gone to a private family nearly two hundred years ago and were not the Crown’s to gift any longer.
She had often held that fact up to him--citing his own father’s honorable effort which had earned the reward the monarch had bestowed upon him. He had argued that not everyone could save a future king’s life, but they might still deserve to own a horse and be educated.
She had scoffed that those laws had been repealed, but here, she understood more clearly what he had meant when he argued that lifting the laws didn’t always right the wrongs that had accumulated under them.
Sarah seemed to be as fascinated as she, even though the maid was clearly frightened and appalled by what she saw as she peeked out the windows of the moving carriage. “My lady—how does that man expect such a poor horse to pull a cart so heavy? Perhaps we should stop and advise him to get a better horse?”
“I suppose that is all he can afford,” Kate said as charitably as she could, though she was certain the poor horse was about to collapse under its load. She supposed that the man she saw, leading a cart hitched to the broken down nag and with hunger in his eyes, might have a hard time finding a way to improve his business with a horse that needed to rest every few miles.
“I heard tell the Irish were lazy, but I didn’t believe it before now. That Aoife we had at the duke’s house was a hard worker, and cheerful, too. Here, it seems no one’s working hard at all.”
Kate understood her prejudice, but looked beyond the slow moving workers to see the want in the prematurely aging faces. “I suppose we’d all work more slowly and with less enthusiasm if we hadn’t had a good meal in our stomachs in some time.”
Hunger was apparent everywhere in the thin faces and angry eyes. She found herself hushing Sarah whenever they were near people who would turn to look askance at them, as if their voices marked them as devils.
“Hard work is the only way to fill your belly.” Sarah said adamantly. “My ma taught me that when I was little and I never forgot it.”
Hard work might have helped these people get back what they had lost throughout the years. But, as she drove by the small neat parcels of land that could hardly support a crop to pay the landlord, never mind feed the occupants, the thought occurred to her--work doing what?
Should all these people leave their land to work in England? Or perhaps just a few able bodied sons? She knew of more than one second son in England who’d had to go out and make his own way far from home.
Was it so very unfair to have to leave your family if you wanted to better yourself? And what would happen to them when you left. Certainly there would be one less mouth to feed, but also one less pair of shoulders to carry the burden of everyday life.
Why had he never spoken of this personal misery? Their discussion had always remained in the realm of the philosophical, never descended into the reality of hunger and hopelessness etched deeply into the faces of adult and child alike.
Sean had crossed wits with her, sometimes even passionately, but there had always been a reserve to him. Perhaps this was why? Because when he talked of hunger and famine he was not seeing only words, but suffering faces? Had he wanted to spare her the knowledge? Did he think her too faint-hearted to bear the sorrow? Or too well-cared for to understand?
Could this be why he had never sent for her? Why his letters had been wonderful at holding out hope just short of true promises? She shook her head. No. That was just her way of trying to justify the horrible thing he had done--abandoning his wife and now daring to accuse her of infidelity. Could he believe it? Or was this just a convenient way to rid himself of an inconvenient wife? She wished she knew for certain why he had decided now, after five years, to sue for divorce.
She had tried to understand why. But there was no reason she could see--unless he had chosen to divorce her simply because he had run through her money and needed more.
If so, he would find no more English heiresses interested in him, any sensible young woman’s parents would not wish her to be married to a man who might divorce her in a few years. But perhaps he, like Betsey, had set his sights on America to fulfill his dreams? There were many wealthy heiresses there who seemed only to require a title from a husband, and little else.
It was dusk when she arrived. The fields, fallow now until spring, looked well enough tended and without an overgrowth of weeds, but the drive up the abbey, which must at one time have been a pleasant journey shaded by overarching branches of the flanking trees was now a nightmarish struggle up a tangled way.
“Sit in the middle of the seat, my lady,” Sarah prodded her, doing the same on the opposite bench. “Otherwise, I fear your hair might be torn off your very head.” Kate didn’t argue. The gnarled and twisted branch tips were not merely content to scrape and twist along the sides of the carriage, but at times poked into the windows as well.
The rutted path emphasized with every jolt that she was neither expected nor welcome, but Kate pulled the tattered bits of her courage up around herself and determined to show him that she would not be bested. As they grew close, she could see the candles glowing in the windows of the hulking abbey. Did he really live there? It seemed more like a ruin than a home.
“Is that it?” Sarah leaned forward, squinting. The flickering glow of the candles, a sign of the season which usually made weary travelers’ hearts lift with a sense of welcome. But all it made Kate’s heart do was ache for the family she had left at home. No doubt they would be preparing for the Twelfth Night celebration tomorrow, laughing and teasing the excited children, the adults turning their thoughts toward spring and the warming of the days.
At last the carriage lurched to a halt, throwing her across the seat. As soon as her teeth stopped rattling, Kate reached for the handle, aching to be on solid, unbolting ground once more after her days aboard ship and a hard day’s travel at a breakneck pace across Ireland in an unsprung carriage.
“See you aren’t the worse for the wear today, mum, miss.” The Irish driver was as genial as could be on the surface, but her days among the servants below stairs had taught her to recognize when resentment simmered under the surface of deference. It often heralded cold tea or slices of lemon without the seeds removed. Even Miranda’s well run household had had its secret rebellions.
Sarah was not so reticent, however. “Such cheek from the likes of you,” she said with a stern harrumph. “Are you all in one piece, my lady?”
“I’m fine enough, now I’m here,” she answered as if she didn’t know the driver would sooner have dumped them at the gates than have his carriage all scratched up by the encroaching tree branches and unpruned bushes. “If you’ll be so good as to get my bags, I’ll instruct the butler to pay you.”
His eyes bulged from his head. “Butler? Here? Do you think you can cheat me?�
�� He approached, more than anger in his eyes, as if she had drawn her sword and demanded he empty his pockets.
Niall appeared then, just when she began to fear for her life. Kate was at once glad to see him and chagrined that it was not Sean who had come. “She has not had the pleasure of a visit here yet, man. You’ll be paid well enough.”
He foraged about his person for a moment and came out with a gold coin--more than generous for the trip Kate and Sarah had just barely survived.
“Fair enough, then.” The man was once again all smiles, but Kate felt a tremble of fear still alive deep within her.
The geniality of these people was hiding a depth of anger she had never seen before, but could still feel.
Even Niall, she noticed now, possessed a certain tension that had gone unremarked in England. For the first time she wondered if she would survive this trip or not. After all, being made a widower would make things much easier for Sean.
Niall took her hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss. “Has the fight been shaken out of you? Is my cousin safe from your wrath for the time being?”
She raised her chin and said nothing.
He laughed. “I should have guessed the answer. Too bad I did not think to wager on it before you arrived.”
Since there was no sign of either butler or footman, she moved to her trunk, determined to carry it in herself. Sarah gamely came to her aid.
“Leave it,” Niall ordered with a laugh. “I’ll have someone take it up to your room for you--unless you’d rather I return you to the coast to book passage on the nearest vessel heading back to civilization?”
Kate glanced around the small area where the lantern light kept back the shadows. There was no sign of Sean. Had he run away, knowing that she would be here? What had Niall told him?
She followed him up the crumbling steps of the abbey, and through the doors that hung crookedly, as if they had been battered down sometime in the recent past and not been repaired by a man of skill. Behind her, Sarah followed more slowly, low voiced grumblings that were incomprehensible, but not favorable.
A Very Romantic Christmas Page 24
