The Christmas Secret (13 page)

Erin gasped. “Henry,
no—”

The crowd began to push forward, straining to see him, their voices raised at the event they were witnessing.

“I love you, Erin. I have from the moment I saw you aboard the ferry.”

“What ferry? I don’t recall mention of a ferry!” Mrs. Gallagher demanded.

“Henry, please do not feel compelled to do this because of what the twins have done,” Erin pleaded with him.

She knew. “I hardly care what they’ve done,” he said. “I hardly care that I am American, or that you are Irish, and an ocean exists between our worlds. I care only for you, Erin. I cannot forget you. I cannot live without you. I will not lose all that I am, do you understand me? If you are willing to explore a new world with me, then I give you my word we will see this one as often as you like.”

Erin gaped at him. It seemed as if people were swirling about, moving and shifting.

“Eireanne,” Lady Donnelly said. “Have mercy! Do not keep him waiting.”

Erin looked around at everyone. She seemed in shock.

“For God’s sake, end my agony, Erin,” Henry said as his pulse began to pound in his veins. “Please say you will be my wife.”

The crowd collectively drew one startled breath and turned, as an entity, to where Erin was standing.

Erin did not end his agony. She took one hesitant step forward. Then another, until she’d reached him. She did not ask him to rise up; she did not speak at all.

“For the love of God, lass,” Henry pleaded. “Yes or no?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and Henry felt his heart plummet. She would not leave Ireland or her family. She would marry a titled man as she’d been destined to do all along. His moment of mad abandon, of following the call of his heart, had been a flight of fancy. He bowed his head, prepared to suffer the humiliation of her rejection.

But Erin surprised him and sank down onto her knees to another chorus of gasps and whispers. She put her hand on his. “You needn’t do this,” she whispered.

“Oh, but I do. I need
you.
It’s only a voyage.”

“Speak up, then, lad, we cannot hear you!” an elderly gentleman blustered.

“Say you need me, too,” he said. “Say you love me and will be my wife.”

“I love you, Henry,” she said, and her face broke into a wreath of smiles. “
Yes
. Yes, I will be your wife.”

Surprise, joy, elation, all lifted Henry up off the floor with Erin in his embrace. He kissed her, and the crowd burst into shouts of joy and congratulations and good tidings. He kept kissing her, his arms going around her, holding her tight, until Donnelly firmly clasped his shoulders.

“Aye, there’s a scandal,” Donnelly said gaily. “But you’re not yet wed, lad.”

Henry reluctantly let Erin go, but he kept her hand in his.

“But . . . but what now?” Lady Donnelly said. “Mr. Bristol, will you postpone your voyage?”

The voyage! He shook his head. “I cannot. My father.”

“But we cannot allow Eireanne to cross alone,” Lady Donnelly said, looking fearfully at Erin.

“I won’t cross alone,” Erin said. “I’ll go with Henry. My things have been packed into trunks to return to Lucerne.” She smiled at him. “I could leave tomorrow.”

“That may be, my love,” Donnelly said. “But you cannot accompany Mr. Bristol without being married to him.”

Erin and Henry looked frantically at each other.

“Which is why Father McKinley will be happy to marry you now, aye, Father?”

“What?” Lady Donnelly cried to her husband, but her voice was lost in the cheers of the guests’ approval. “What of the posting of the banns?”

“I’ll arrange it,” Donnelly said, flicking his wrist as if that was hardly a concern. He was grinning, too, and grabbed Erin up, held her tight, then passed her on to her grandmother as he went to fetch the things the priest would need to marry them.

Henry and Erin were married in the ballroom, beneath boughs of holly and mistletoe, and strange little cherubic angels that hung overhead. They were feted at the feast that marked the end of Christmastide, but this one marked the occasion of their wedding as well. They danced and they received the well wishes of their friends and neighbors, and heard more than one slightly inebriated soul insist that they’d known all along Henry had written the letters for Erin. And when the morning hours came, and the guests began to make their way home, Donnelly sent Erin and Henry up to a guest suite of rooms for their wedding night.

“The accommodations are a bit plain for such an occasion,” he said. But they weren’t at all. They were the most sumptuous accommodations Henry could have imagined. A fire blazed at the hearth and the bed had been turned down.

Together, he and Erin, his wife, crossed the threshold. Henry shut the door at his back and turned the lock. But when he turned around, he was startled to see Erin standing in the middle of the room, her arms crossed, and glaring at him.

Chapter Eleven

Henry cast his arms out wide. “Mrs. Bristol?” he asked uncertainly. “Has something displeased you?”

Mrs. Bristol.
Eireanne very much liked the sound of that. And she was not the least displeased; she was elated. “You might have hinted,” she said. “You might have given me a wee bit of encouragement after our dance. Do you know that I almost left the ball altogether so that I could go to my rooms and have a proper cry?”

“That would have been disastrous for the night on the whole,” he agreed.

“The only reason I did not was because I feared I would not see you again before you left.”

“Wretched planning on my part,” he said, moving toward her. “How shall I ever make it up to you?”

Erin lifted her chin. “By promising me again to love and cherish until death us do part.” She smiled. “I particularly liked that part.”

“Then I solemnly do vow to love and cherish you until death us do part,” he repeated and put his hands on her arms. He leaned in to kiss her, but Eireanne reared back.

“There is one last thing,” she said. “How long did you know of Molly and Mabe’s scheme?”

“You knew? I did not know until they appeared at my door last night to tell me they’d done it. How long did you know?”

Eireanne snorted. “There is where I have an advantage. If anything like this happens in or around Ballynaheath, I instantly suspect them. I judge them guilty until it is proven otherwise. That, and Mabe was entirely too sensitive over the criticism of the letters.” She laughed and put her hand on Henry’s chest. “I shall write them and thank them for the deceit, however, for without it, I would not be standing here with my husband.” Her
husband.
She thought she was the luckiest woman in the world as Henry took her in his arms and kissed her, long and deep. Possessively. Ardently.

When he carefully undressed her, and pressed her back against the pillows, she believed she would sail to the ends of the earth with him. And when he entered her body, his gaze locked on hers, her name on his breath, she believed she would never be happier than she was in that moment.

When he’d made her his wife in every sense of the word, and he lay on his back, her head on his chest, Eireanne believed that she would bear him many children, who would ride horses and sail ships around the world. “Happy Christmas, Henry.”

“Sully nully dog,” he said, and she laughed at his horrible mangling of the Gaelic language.

As Eireanne drifted off for a few hours’ sleep before they began to make their way west, to meet his family—oh, how the prospect daunted her!—she believed that Declan was right about so many things, but this, most of all.

Love was the reason for living.

It was misting the next morning when Eireanne stepped up into the coach. She’d said good-bye to the Hannigans, Keira, and her grandmother—who was, quite surprisingly, at least to Eireanne, not the least bit disappointed that Eireanne had followed her heart.

Declan had insisted on walking her and Henry out. He stood with his hands thrust into his pockets, gazing somberly at her.

Eireanne smiled and cupped his face. “It’s only a voyage,” she reminded him.

“Aye, aye,” he said, then grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. “Have a care with my sister, Bristol, or you’ll have me to answer to,” he said gruffly.

Henry laughed. “That is the one thing about which you have no need to worry.”

Henry and Eireanne climbed into the coach, but Eireanne leaned out the window. “You will write me, aye, Declan?”

“Every week,” he promised her.

“And you won’t be too hard on Molly and Mabe?”

“I will make no promises as to that,” he said.

Eireanne grinned. “I had a dream, did I tell you?” she asked as the coachman climbed onto his seat.

“What dream?” Declan asked.

“I dreamed that Keira gave birth to twins.”

“
Dia,
you torture me!” Declan groaned. But he was grinning. He touched his hand to hers as the coach pulled away, then stood watching them go.

Eireanne watched Ballynaheath and her family growing smaller, and when she could no longer see her home, she turned away from the window to her husband.

Henry smiled sympathetically. “Any regrets?”

“Only that you didn’t come to Ireland sooner.”

He pulled her onto his lap. “I give you my word I’ll make it up to you every day from here on.”

That wasn’t necessary—he’d already made it up to her the moment he’d dropped to his knee.

Happy Holidays from Julia London!