Sarah M. Eden British Isles Collection (A Timeless Romance Anthology Book 15)

by Sarah M. Eden

  I might even get around to telling her that, if I’m ever allowed to leave this stable, that is. Grumbling, one must understand, is quite the most productive way to pass an evening. If nothing else, it makes a soul feel the tiniest bit better. Kicking at stray bits of straw helps as well.

  Beyond the stables, voices raised in laughter and song echoed from the village. People were celebrating together, happy and contented. He, alone, was… alone.

  It being Christmas and a holy day, he limited himself to only the mildest of curses, nothing that would make a priest call him in for confession, but he was none too happy. Stepping back out to the stable yard, he shot a wary eye heavenward. Not a flake of snow fell, something Maeve might have blamed his absence on other than himself.

  She was likely sitting at the window, watching for him to come. Or had been for a time until she’d given up on him.

  The bells at St. Canice’s had long since rung the call to evening mass. The sun had set. He couldn’t help wondering if the Marquess’s family meant to return that evening. They’d set off to visit friends who had a country home near Castlecomer. ’Twas entirely possible they’d opted to remain for the night. One benefit of being fine and fancy was the ability to cause inconvenience without consequence, at least not to one’s fine and fancy self.

  And so Sean sat on a stool in the empty stable yard, a weight in his stomach and on his heart. “’Twas all she wanted for Christmas,” he informed the unhelpful heavens. “A visit, the chance to sit at each other’s side, to talk as we always do. ’Twas all she wanted, and I promised her. I promised her.”

  He leaned his elbows on his legs and rested his head in his hands. He’d planned to tell her that he loved her. A man doesn’t build up the courage to do so easily, which made the night’s events all the more tragic. ’Twould have been quite a perfect Christmas.

  But sometimes all one needs for perfection is an added measure of patience.

  A mere moment after Sean had chastised the heavens, the sound of approaching hooves pulled his head up out of his hands. The family, it seemed, had returned. He’d be terribly late getting to the Butlers’ cottage, but he would get there just the same. He would knock at the door for hours if necessary until Maeve allowed him to explain and apologize.

  He rushed to his expected position, just inside the entry arch, and stood at respectful attention. Into the stable yard came not a fine carriage pulled by a high-stepping team, but a humble and rickety old hay cart, pulled by two draft horses and driven by a ginger farmer, with a dark-haired beauty beside him, and a tall, stick of a man behind.

  ’Twasn’t the Butlers of Kilkenny Castle nor the up road Butlers, but the six boulders family, his Butlers. And his Maeve.

  Liam pulled the cart to a stop in the middle of the yard. Sean stood in shock, frozen at the unexpected sight. His Maeve.

  True to the feisty colleen she’d proven herself to be, Maeve hopped from the cart without waiting for anyone’s assistance, then came directly toward him.

  “I am so very sorry, Maeve. I’d not meant to—” He managed nothing beyond that.

  “We’ve brought supper, Sean. Will Desmond pitch a fit if we eat it here with you, do you think?”

  “Supper?” His thoughts swam too swiftly for making complete sense of her words.

  “When you didn’t arrive, I assumed you’d been made to stay here rather than being given the evening to yourself.”

  He nodded, his worry still too great for a verbal response.

  “So we brought Christmas supper to you.”

  He took her hand, his own trembling with uncertainty. Did this mean she’d not lost faith in him? “I have to wait for the castle family to return with their carriage and team. I’m the newest hand, so the lot fell to me.” The glove she wore was cold. Her hand beneath must have been near to freezing. “You shouldn’t have come so far in the cold, love. You’ll catch your death.”

  She reached up and touched his face. “I’d’ve gone clear to Mayo if need be.”

  “You aren’t angry with me for disappointing you?”

  Hers was a soft and alluring smile. “You’ve not disappointed me.”

  “Kiss the lass, already,” Kieran called from the hay cart. “We’ve a Christmas supper to eat.”

  “There are empty stalls at the end of the row,” Sean said. “Your animals’ll be warm there.”

  Liam smirked a bit. “Trying to shoo away your audience, are you?”

  “That is precisely what I’m doing. Now off with you.”

  They obliged.

  Sean turned every ounce of his attention back to Maeve. He pulled her fully into his arms. “I was so afraid you’d be boilin’, love. I broke m’ word to you. You gave me your trust, and I broke it.”

  “You’ve not broken my trust in you, Sean. I trust you enough to have never doubted all the day long that you’d’ve come if you could.”

  He lightly brushed his lips against her forehead. “I don’t deserve you.”

  “No, you don’t.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “But you come close enough, that I’ll not hold it against you.”

  He kissed her temple, then her cheek. Heavens, but he adored this woman. “Maeve, darlin’ Maeve. I’ve nothing to give you for Christmas. I haven’t money for a fine gift, and I didn’t make it out to see you today.” He cupped her face in his hands. “But I give you what I have, love. I give you my devotion and my caring, and I give you my love, all of it, every beat of my heart and every breath that fills my body.”

  He meant to seal the promise with a fervent kiss. She, however, was quicker than he was. She rose up on her toes and kissed him, her lips to his, making a promise without words that matched his spoken vow.

  A promise of days and months and Christmases yet to come. A promise of love.

  That Christmas was not in my time, nor in yours, but it was in someone’s time just the same. Sean and Maeve shared many a supper, both at the castle stables and at the six boulders Butlers’ cottage. One might say their courtship was undertaken along the very road that first brought Sean Kirkpatrick to that fateful muddy field.

  He’d taken a wrong turn, made a mistake. And what a grand mistake it turned out to be. By their second Christmas, the two were happily married. In time they were blessed with a daughter, who had a daughter, who had a son.

  She named her son Thomas, but everyone calls me Old Tom.

  Chapter One

  London, 1810

  Miss Elizabeth Gillerford counted amongst her most notable realizations one she had at the very wise age of eight and three quarters. She came to the irrefutable understanding that her heart would forever belong to the twelve-year-old boy to whom her sister had already pledged a life of devotion: their neighbor, Julian Broadwood.

  Falling desperately in love was painful enough for any eight-year-old girl, but having a heart so fickle as to devote itself to the object of the deepest longing of one’s sister added another layer of acute discomfort. Thus Elizabeth spent the next ten years in various stages of misery and heartbreak.

  Mary, her older sister, had made her first bows to Society two years earlier, and, seeing as Julian had made very few appearances, Mary remained unhappily unattached but determined to wring a proposal out of Julian. Unfortunately, their parents were sticklers for the strictest versions of social etiquette, so until Mary wed, Elizabeth simply had to wait for her own debut in Society. At nearly nineteen, she was quickly growing embarrassingly old to have not made her bows.

  “Society doesn’t entirely forbid a younger sister from being out before her older sister is married,” Elizabeth argued to her parents a week before the Season was set to truly begin once more. “Especially if the older sister doesn’t seem to be making progress and the younger sister is more than old enough to have a Season.”

  Her father was already shaking his head, the movement setting his jowls flopping about. “Some may be willing to flaunt expectations willy-nilly, but the Gillerfords are stalwart. We do not
bend to—”

  “—the fickle winds of ever-changing opinion,” Elizabeth said under her breath in perfect unison with her father’s declaration. She had long ago learned a deep appreciation for his opposition to fickle winds. In full voice once more, she argued, “I am nearly nineteen, Father, and will soon be so firmly lodged on the shelf that I may as well be a book in the darkest corners of a lending library.”

  Mother chose that exact moment to wander inside. “Oh, dear. You haven’t been frequenting the lending library, have you? People will begin to form the wrong idea of you.”

  “They might think I read?” Elizabeth asked dryly.

  “Precisely.” Mother emphasized the declaration with a widening of her eyes and a desperate nod of her head. “A girl should read, of course; she simply shouldn’t make a point of doing so. The ladies will think you a touch too blue for their company, and the gentlemen will think you a vast deal too educated for theirs.”

  This was an old argument that Elizabeth knew far too well. “Gregory does not think me too educated for his company.”

  Mother waved that off. “Brothers are supposed to overlook their sisters’ faults.”

  Faults. Lovely.

  “What of Julian Broadwood?” Elizabeth asked. “He has never shown any disgust at my refusal to hide my literacy.”

  Mother had no immediate answer. Father filled in the gap.

  “He is meant for Mary,” he said. “No doubt he already views you quite as his own sister, and therefore has joined Gregory in turning a blind eye to your oddities.”

  “Has he at last declared his intention to court Mary, then?” She tried to ask the question casually. But how does one lackadaisically ask if one’s heart is about to be crushed to a fine powder and sent adrift on, as her father would have called it, the fickle winds of change?

  “Our family and the Broadwoods have always understood that young Julian and our dear Mary would make a match of it,” Father said in a tone of scolding. “He needn’t come to make a formal declaration.”

  “Well, if he means to marry her, I wish he would hurry and do so.” Oddly enough, she very nearly meant it. “If she were engaged, I could make my bows and find myself a husband, since no one in the neighborhood bothered to conveniently produce a son for me to marry.”

  She refused to admit to anyone that, as far as she was concerned, Julian fit that description. She preferred to do her suffering in secret.

  Mother dropped onto her chaise longue, pressing her fingers elegantly to her temples. “You do give me such headaches with all of your nonsense, Elizabeth.”

  “I know, Mother. I know.” She left her parents in the sitting room and walked out of sight down the corridor before sighing aloud in frustration.

  A girl should read, of course, she simply shouldn’t make a point of doing so.

  She had endured such ridiculousness for nearly nineteen years. She couldn’t do so much longer. Heaven help her, if she was left on the shelf and had to live out her life in her parents’ house, she would go mad.

  Chapter Two

  Julian stood beside his best friend, Damion, on the walk outside the Gillerfords’ London home, attempting to convince himself to go inside. As an old friend of the family, he couldn’t very well not make an appearance at their ball. More pressing even than that, his mother would summon him to Broadwood House before breakfast had even cooled the next morning to ring a peal over his head if he didn’t spend at least a full hour at the Gillerfords’ ball, dancing and socializing and generally pretending he was happy to be there.

  “Don’t turn lily-livered on me now, old boy,” Damion, insisted. “You’ve ducked out of nearly every social obligation these past two years. I’ll not keep making excuses for you.”

  Julian groaned and dragged himself forward.

  “I doubt Miss Gillerford will be waiting on the other side of the door with a vicar and a license,” Damion reassured him. “You’ll be obligated to a single set with her. You’ve courage enough for that, surely.”

  “Dancing with her is like a prisoner tying the knot in his own noose.”

  Julian plastered a smile on his face as they stepped into the front foyer. There stood his row of anxious executioners: Mr. and Mrs. Gillerford grinned with glee at seeing him. Mary’s eyes took on that eerie aura of possessiveness she’d first adopted when she was ten and he almost twelve. He liked it even less now than he had then.

  He made his bows as quickly as possible without being rude. Mary opened her mouth to say something. Julian spoke first. “I do not see Miss Elizabeth.”

  Mrs. Gillerford hit him playfully with her fan. “You know full well that she is not out in Society yet.”

  He did, indeed, know, and it bothered him to no end. “But she is quite of an age to be so.”

  Mr. Gillerford’s brow furrowed with indignation. “She’ll have her come out when it is proper.”

  In all truth, the “proper” time had come and gone. Beth ought to have made her bows the year before. He could easily picture her upstairs, watching the carriages arrive and quite eloquently decrying the ridiculousness of her exclusion from it all.

  He found her absence trying as well. She, along with her brother, who avoided London as one would a den of hungry wolves, were the only members of that family with whom he enjoyed spending time, Beth being preferable even to Gregory. She conversed with intelligence. Her sense of humor displayed her innate wit. She didn’t flaunt her wealth or beauty the way her mother and sister insisted on doing. In short, she was pleasant company, a rare enough thing in Society. He’d always liked her.

  “You will be pleased to know that our Mary has her supper dance open,” Mrs. Gillerford said.

  Julian was far too adept at side stepping such things to fall into that trap. “I shall be certain tomorrow to ask my mother what fortunate gentleman was granted the privilege of claiming her supper dance.” He took a step closer to the ballroom. “Forgive me for holding up the reception line so long.”

  With that, he made good his escape.

  “Excellently done,” Damion said, slapping him on the back. “Does Wellington know your knack for stratagems?”

  “I have had several years of practice.” He glanced back at the reception line, barely holding back a shudder. “The Gillerfords have it firmly in their heads that I am destined to be their son-in-law. I am firmly convinced that they would take a supper dance, or an overly long glance, or my willingness to be in the same room as their older daughter as tantamount to a declaration. They’d have our announcement in the papers by morning.”

  They stepped into the ballroom with its din of voices. He and Damion cringed in unison. Together they’d survived more than their share of Society functions.

  “Time for the ‘two in a row’?” Damion asked the question to which they both knew the answer.

  “I’ll meet you at the punch bowl in an hour,” Julian said. “Make certain to greet enough matrons to warrant whispers over tea tomorrow. If we’re forced to be here, we may as well receive credit for it.”

  They set off in opposite directions, in search of two young ladies they could ask to dance. Experience had shown them that two sets within two hours, plus a few well placed “Good evenings” gave the impression they had spent far more time at a ball than they actually had.

  Julian had made a point of choosing for his two-in-a-row partners young ladies who didn’t seem likely to have any other partners. Those ladies relegated to the lonely corners were often neglected and ignored. They deserved to be treated with kindness. And he generally found they were finer company than the belles of the ball.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a silhouette in an unused doorway. He couldn’t say just how he knew, but he identified her in an instant. Did Beth always spy on her parents’ balls, or was today a special occasion? He intended to ask her, though doing so meant abandoning his efforts at securing a partner for the first set of dances.

  Damion’ll have my neck. Still, he moved qui
ckly in the direction of Beth’s hiding place. He might manage to fit in two sets after speaking with her. But time or no time, he wanted to see his old friend.

  Just as he reached the doorway, she disappeared into the darkness. With a quick look around to make certain no one in the ballroom saw him, he slipped out and stepped into the room beyond.

  Only moonlight spilling through French doors illuminated the space at all— Mr. Gillerford’s library, by the looks of it.

  “I know you’re in here, Beth,” he whispered.

  “If you give me away, so help me…”

  He turned back in the direction of her voice and found her watching him from beside the door, arms folded defiantly across her chest. She’d always been firmly independent. That was one of the greatest things about her. Julian snatched up her hand and pulled her over to the French doors.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Outside,” he explained. “If we’re found in here, I’ll have to run myself through with my own sword.”

  “Rather than be forced to marry me, is that it?”

  Being caught alone meant not merely a forced marriage, but also leaving her reputation in ruins, painting himself as a cad, and destroying their friendship. So, yes. He’d rather they not be found out. He shrugged, keeping to the more casual tone they’d thus far employed. “More or less.”

  A few people wandered about on the terrace. Julian slipped Beth’s arm through his. “Pretend that this is commonplace,” he whispered. “We’d best not attract too much notice.”

  “No amount of pretending will change the fact that I’m not dressed for a ball.”

  He hadn’t noted her attire until that moment. Her dress was decidedly plain, but at least she wasn’t in her nightrail or anything equally scandalous. They kept to the edges of the small, lantern-lit garden. Poor Beth looked deucedly uncomfortable. He wouldn’t keep her but a moment.