NOBODY’S SAINT
By Paula Reed
NOBODY’S SAINT
Paula Reed
Copyright © 2012
All Rights Reserved.
AGENCY INFORMATION
NLA Digital Liaison Platform LLC
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Also by Paula Reed
The Caribbean Trilogy:
Into His Arms
For Her Love
Nobody’s Saint
That Kind Of Woman
Hester: The Missing Years of The Scarlet Letter
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
About the Author
An excerpt from That Kind Of Woman
Prologue
1670
“Come a little farther, Mary Kate!” Séamus Tylling called, looking over one of his fine, broad shoulders. The cool, damp Irish breeze ruffled his red hair.
That same breeze blew Mary Katherine O’Reilly’s unbound hair of jet black across her face and she tossed it aside to smile mischievously at Séamus. “Over the hill and out of sight of your parents’ house? What is it you have on your mind then?”
Séamus looked past her, down the hill and across the field, where his mother stood in plain sight, hanging out the wash. “We’ll go to the river for a little fishing,” he answered.
“And you with no pole?” she said, but she followed him anyway toward the top of the slope. She had no doubt that he fancied himself in possession of the only pole he needed for the fishing he had on his mind. If that was the case, he’d be going home without supper, but she might let him splash a little. She did so like being wrapped in his arms, and him with those heavenly shoulders.
“Mary Kate! Mary Kate!” The barest trace of a girl’s voice carried across the field on the wind.
Mary Kate groaned. Only her sister could yell loudly enough to outdo even the wind. She turned around to see Bridget, her own black hair dancing, running past the Tyllings’ house. Too late, Mary Kate realized she should have pretended she didn’t hear her, but Bridget would only have followed the two of them.
She stopped long enough to yell back, “Go home, Bridget!”
The command didn’t so much as break Bridget’s stride. Of course not. Mary Kate sighed. Bridget was fifteen, going on sixteen, only a year and a half younger than Mary Kate and old enough to know when three was a crowd. Both girls had luxuriant black hair and crystal blue eyes, and each had her own collection of young men lined up to take her out walking.
Bridget wisely stopped just outside her sister’s reach, panting for breath. “Now before you go thinking I’ve come to spoil your chance to make a tart of yourself with Séamus here…”
“You’re a fine one to talk!” Mary Kate snapped. “Did you really think Michael would keep his mouth shut about kissing you behind the granary last week? Half the village knows now.”
Bridget smirked. “But does Séamus know about Liam?”
“What?” Séamus asked.
Mary Kate turned around for a moment. She had almost forgotten he was there. Then she spun back toward Bridget, her fist clenched and cocked back, but the younger girl danced out of reach.
“Come back here, you little coward!” Mary Kate muttered.
“There’s no time for this. Da wants us both home, now.”
Mary Kate tossed her head. “Da can wait. Give him another hour and he’ll have drunk too much to remember what he wanted.”
“You’ve gone out walking with Liam?” Séamus asked behind her, his voice hostile.
Mary Kate turned to him, her brows raised. “And what about you and Maggie Fitzpatrick?”
Séamus blushed and dropped the argument.
“I don’t think he’ll be forgetting, Mary Kate,” Bridget said. “He’s at home with our grandfather.”
Mary Kate focused her attention back on her sister. “He’s had that much, has he? And it not even three in the afternoon.”
“You don’t understand,” Bridget insisted. “He’s not just seeing things. He really is with our grandfather.”
Shock washed over Mary Kate. “Saints preserve us. He’s…he’s…”
Bridget rolled her eyes. “Not his da,” she said, referring to their father’s father, who had been taken by pneumonia three winters past, “our other grandfather.”
Now Mary Katherine stood stock-still. “Holy Mary Mother of God.”
Bridget nodded. “My words exactly.”
Instantly the fight was forgotten, just like poor Séamus who stood at the top of the hill and watched yet another chance to try to convince Mary Kate to give him more than a few heated kisses walk away from him.
On the way home, the two girls speculated about what might have brought their mother’s father to Ulster all the way from England. He had come to Ireland eighteen years before to survey the estate that Oliver Cromwell had given him, along with the title of baronet, in appreciation for his services in squashing the Irish rebellion. With him, he had brought his wife, daughter, and two sons. He didn’t stay long, though. The only member of Sir Calder Larcombe’s family to take to Ireland had been his daughter, Bess.
She had also taken to a certain handsome Irishman by the name of Dylan O’Reilly. Sir Calder delayed his return home long enough to see to it that his errant, pregnant daughter married the man responsible for her fall, much to Dylan and Bess’s delight, and had not returned since.
Not even when Bridget was born, and Bess had died.
The farms included in Sir Calder’s estate were well tended and somewhat prosperous, but the manor house, where Mary Kate and Bridget lived, was rather rough around the edges. Sheep wandered over the ragged front lawn and weeds choked the flower and vegetable gardens. The low stone wall surrounding the house was crumbling in several places.
Inside, the house was neat, even if the furniture was worn. Mary Kate paused outside the closed door of the library and listened. It was always better to know what she was walking in on before she dared to enter her father’s “drinking room.” That was what she and Bridget called the chamber, seeing as it didn’t contain a single book. Just a desk, a few chairs, and a portrait of their mother.
“Where the devi
l are they!” a strange and very English voice barked.
“Mary Kate could be anywhere. She has a mind of her own, that one,” came her father’s reply. The words were slurred, neither hostile nor placating. Apathetic. That meant that he was past belligerent but two or three glasses shy of weeping with bitter despair. Better make an entrance now. She knocked crisply.
The door opened so fast she nearly cried out, startled. The man who had opened it was thin, his impeccable clothing hanging on his frame. His gray hair was tied back, emphasizing the lines on his sour face, and his sharp eyes glared at her from beneath heavy, gray brows.
“Good God, you’re the elder?” he exclaimed, his eyes taking in her disheveled hair and workaday gown. “You are a disaster!”
“Good God,” she mimicked in a flawless imitation of his priggish English accent, “you’re my grandfather? You have dreadful manners.”
His impressive brows shot up in surprise. “Well, at least she can sound reasonably civilized. With the right clothes and a well-trained ladies maid… Turn around.”
“And just who do you think—” She was back to her own Irish lilt.
“Just do as he says, Mary Kate,” Dylan said, not bothering to rise from his seat at the desk inside the library.
“I most certainly will not! How dare you?” she said to the older man. “You all but ignore us, only writing when you think we’ve gone too long without sending you your rents, and now you come here and insult me.”
Sir Calder glared, first at his son-in-law, then at his granddaughters. “I had thought the two of you might look at least a little like Larcombes. You are both O’Reilly, through and through.”
“And proud to be so,” Bridget said, and Mary Kate nodded. “Just what is it you want here, anyway?”
“You may leave,” Sir Calder said, waving his hands at Bridget to shoo her from his presence.
Mary Kate reached over and took her sister’s hand, drawing her into the room. “Whatever this family faces, we face it together. Isn’t that so, Da?”
Dylan dropped his forehead into his hand, leaning against the top of the desk. Mary Kate glanced over and saw that the whiskey bottle was empty.
“Da?”
He raised his dark-haired head, and his blue eyes were bloodshot, but clearer than she had expected. He must have run out a while ago.
“You’ve run wild too long, Mary Katherine,” he said, and she frowned at him in confusion.
“I’m not getting any younger,” Sir Calder said. “I risked my life for an estate and a title. I did not do that so the title could die with me and the lands revert to the Crown.”
Bridget squeezed her hand, and Mary Kate swallowed hard. They had all lived in dread of the day that Sir Calder’s eldest son might decide to take over the house and the surrounding farms. This was their home, and besides, the farms prospered because they were managed by the O’Reilly family, good Irish Catholics. The tenants would chafe at some meddling English Protestant.
“And since I have no heirs save you two,” he gestured at them negligently.
“Excuse me?” Mary Kate said.
“What?” Bridget demanded.
Sir Calder’s pinched face squeezed even tighter. “My wife and sons were killed in London. In an accident.”
Now, Mary Kate might have no good use for her grandfather, but she was not without compassion. She let go of Bridget’s hand and stepped forward. “How awful for you. I’m so sorry.”
His cold stare stopped her. “I need a male. A great-grandson. You are going to give him to me.”
Mary Kate smiled. “False modesty aside, there are more than a few fine lads in this village who’d be only too happy to help with that. I’m not of a mind to marry just yet, but—”
“My title is not going to the offspring of one of these drunken Irishmen!” Sir Calder glanced at Dylan, who stared morosely at his empty bottle. “I’m taking you to England.”
Bridget stepped in front of her sister, never mind that she was over a year younger and three inches shorter. “You’ll be taking yourself straight off to hell!”
“I’ll fight my own battles, Bridget! May you leave and never return, Sir Calder Larcombe, for I’d sooner give myself to the Church than the likes of an English pig!”
“You’ll be taking my sister nowhere!” Bridget joined in.
“Out!” Dylan shouted, finally rising from his chair. “Get out, Bridget!”
“Stand up for her!” Bridget cried. “Tell this snob to swim back home; we’ve no need of him here!”
Dylan drew back his hand and took a step toward his youngest. “Mind your tongue, you little—”
Mary Kate stepped between them. “Go,” she said to Bridget.
“And you, too,” Dylan yelled, pointing to Sir Calder. “Both of you, out of my sight! I’ll talk to me daughter on me own.”
Bridget gave Mary Kate a worried glance, but Mary Kate gestured to the door.
“Well, you heard him,” Bridget said to her grandfather. “Out!” She marched through the door, Sir Calder reluctantly at her heels.
Dylan, dragging his feet, shut the door behind them. Then he turned back to Mary Kate and leaned on the portal. “Might as well scream and rage and get it out of your system. You’re going.”
“Like hell. And I know you too well to think you’re so drunk you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“‘Tis right you are, Mary Kate. I’m sober enough to know there’s no other way.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We need you.”
“You’ve the right of it there. The place will fall to wrack and ruin without me. Who’ll keep the accounts? Who’ll cook and oversee the farms? You? From your seat in Jack Roche’s pub? Bridget? She can’t add two and two and burns everything she puts over a fire.”
Dylan winced. “You’re unkind honest, daughter. But Bridget’s smarter than you give her credit for.”
“I’m staying here.”
“Then you’ll be putting us out of our house and home. Larcombe’s brought an English manager with him. If you’ll not go, his man will be moving in here, and we’ll be on the street.”
“He wouldn’t!”
“And why not? D’you think he gives a tinker’s damn what becomes of us?”
Mary Kate had been handling all of her family’s correspondence with Sir Larcombe for years. He never asked after their health or wellbeing. He hadn’t even seen fit to tell them that his wife and sons had died. All he ever cared about was the profits from the farms.
She started to reach for her father’s whiskey bottle, just for the pure satisfaction of sending it sailing against the wall, but another thought stayed her hand. She turned and looked at her father. “Get out of my way.”
“There’s no use making it worse,” he argued, but at her arch look, he sidestepped away from the door. Still, he reached for her, his face soft. “God forgive me, Mary Kate, I wish it weren’t like this.”
“I know that.”
“I love you, lass.” He wrapped her in his arms, and Mary Kate returned his embrace, surrounded by the smell of whiskey, a scent that she associated with both his love and his rages. “God help me, to lose Bess and now you.” His voice broke, and Mary Kate’s heart broke with it.
She disentangled herself from her father and collected her emotions before opening the library door and looking out into the sitting room, where Sir Calder and Bridget sat across from each other, glaring daggers through the space that separated them.
“I’m a reasonable woman,” Mary Kate said, addressing her grandfather. “We need this house. If you’ve no one to inherit, why, who’s to stop your king from bestowing it on some other milksop English pretender?”
“I will not tolerate—”
“And you need me, too.” That shut his mouth. “But our people have never had much use for each other. What if I go with you, but you can’t find an arrogant Englishman who’ll have a lowly Irish lass like myself? As you said, you’r
e not getting any younger. ‘Tis only, I’d hate to see you die without an heir, just because you were too stubborn to settle for an Irishman.”
“Oh, I shall find an English husband for you. On that you can rely.”
“Well, seeing as you’re so certain, you’d not mind fixing a time limit. Say, a year?”
“That’s preposterous!”
“Two.”
“You are in no position to set limits, young lady!”
“Then set them yourself. How long do you think it will take you to find someone who aspires to the lofty position of baronet?”
“That is quite enough of your sarcasm! And I believe I can have you wed before you reach your age of majority.”
“Four years? I’ll not be spending four years away from my own!”
“The sooner you wed, the sooner you can return.”
Mary Kate contemplated his terms. “Before I reach my age of majority? And if you can’t find a husband by my twenty-first birthday, will you swear that I can return and marry as I will, and that the lands will go to Bridget’s or my Irish sons?”
“I’m no fool. You’ll only turn down every man I present to you.”
Mary Kate smiled sweetly. Only Bridget and Dylan knew just what ill might befall the recipient of such a smile from this particular Irishwoman. “Upon my word, I’ll accept the first man who’ll have me, so long as ‘tis before my twenty-first birthday.”
Sir Calder sneered. “You’ll be the mother of my heir by then, Mary Katherine.”
The battle lines had been drawn.
Chapter One
1674
One hand on the helm, the captain of the Spanish merchant ship Magdalena watched the pirate ship sink below the horizon through his spyglass. He dropped the instrument into the pocket of a dark jacket that fell below his hips and skimmed his thighs, and he swept the length of the deck with a worried frown. Crewmen glanced in his direction out of the corners of their eyes and made furtive signs of the cross over their breasts. The captain shook his head in consternation, and the mahogany hair that framed his narrow face spilled over his shoulders.
Paula Reed - [Caribbean] Page 1
