The Christmas Secret (4 page)

Chapter Two

DUBLIN, IRELAND

Eireanne O’Conner had been reared at Ballynaheath in County Galway. When she was a girl, a trip to Dublin was considered a treat, what with all its shops and the variety of goods, matched only by the variety of people milling about the streets. But now, having spent the last three months in Lucerne, Switzerland, she found it surprising that Dublin should seem so small and dirty.

She supposed her instructors had opened her eyes in more ways than she’d realized. She’d been attending the prestigious
Institut Villa de Amiels,
where young ladies of considerable means from all around the world were sent for “schooling.” That was the polite way of indicating that young ladies were sent to be groomed for the most elite marriage marts in the world. Supposedly, when a young lady emerged from the
Institut,
she had not only acquired all the social skills necessary to move among the
haut ton
but she’d established the necessary connections as well. It therefore stood to reason, at least to the families who paid the dear price to send daughters, that offers of marriage would come flowing in.

Eireanne would believe that was true when she was presented with an offer of marriage. Declan, the Earl of Donnelly—Eireanne’s brother and guardian—intended to dispatch her to London upon completing her studies for the sole purpose of finding a husband. That was the goal, the peach floating in the cream, Eireanne’s
raison d’être
. She was to take her schooling and find a titled husband
tout de suite.

It all sounded entirely too calculated, but quite honestly, Eireanne was at peace with the truth of her situation. She wanted to be married, to have children, to run her own house. And she still held out hope for love.

Unfortunately, her opportunities for a love match were rather bleak in Ireland. In County Galway, gentlemen bachelors did not crop up like wildflowers in the parks as they seemed to do in Dublin and London, or even in Lucerne. Not that it mattered to her particular circumstance, for even if there had been squads of bachelors trooping about Ballynaheath, it was
her
suitability as a match that had kept Eireanne from gaining an offer. It was all quite simple, according to her friends, Molly and Mabe Hannigan, the younger twin sisters of Keira, the woman Declan had married in a wee bit of haste on the heels of yet another scandal . . . Declan, God love him, had been quite good in attracting scandal through the years.

What Molly and Mabe meant was that because Eireanne had been raised by her brother the earl, and had lived under his influence, her reputation was tainted by his scandals. Gentlemen might have esteemed her, but their families didn’t esteem Declan, particularly after a tragic assault on a girl at Ballynaheath several years ago. It had had nothing to do with Declan, but because it had happened at his home, he’d been viewed as responsible. And when the girl had taken her own life rather than live with the shame, Declan had left Eireanne so that he might flee his private demons, and she . . . well, she had existed with the censure.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Molly had said one long ago afternoon. She and Mabe had been lounging about Eireanne’s suite of rooms at Ballynaheath as they were wont to do while Eireanne and her maid had packed her things. “It wasn’t as if
you
were diddling the maid or jumping off cliffs, was it?”

The poor maid’s face had flamed red. It was an accepted fact in and around Galway that Molly and Mabe Hannigan could be rather outspoken. Frankly, the entire Hannigan clan had a reputation for speaking their minds, whether or not anyone wanted to hear it. Nevertheless, Molly had had a point. What had happened at Ballynaheath had been beyond Declan’s control. Yet he’d tried to make it up to Eireanne by arranging her acceptance at the
Institut.

“It is our only hope,” her grandmother had said on more than one occasion. “Eireanne is the only one of us who might remove the shadow that has been cast on our family name. She
must
marry well.”

So at the age of one and twenty, which had been well past the age most young ladies of means were sent off to finishing schools, or even married, Eireanne had packed her bags and headed for Lucerne.

She liked Lucerne. She liked the school, and the friends she’d made there. But she missed home, and she was excited to be coming home for Christmastide. However, Eireanne was aware she would not be returning to the Ballynaheath she’d always known: the one in which she’d lived with her grandmother as a guardian, quite alone, rambling about that huge old house while Declan had been off to England or where have you breeding and racing horses. He was married now, and his wife, Keira, was expecting their first child. Eireanne’s grandmother had written that Keira’s family was ever present.

Eireanne was no longer the mistress. She was the guest. It was a wee bit disconcerting.

A steady rain greeted Eireanne on the morning the coach arrived from Ballynaheath to carry her the last leg of her journey. She was well accustomed to the sort of winter travel one might expect across Ireland and therefore wore her sturdiest boots and a wool gown, buttoned up to the chin to keep the rain from her neck. She also wore her new red cloak. Her bags were lashed to the back of the coach and covered with a tarp.

Mr. Donovan, the gentleman Declan had sent to escort Eireanne from Lucerne, was waiting for her in the foyer of the hotel when she came down. “The coach is just outside, miss. The lad will show you in.”

“The lad? Aren’t you coming, Mr. Donovan?” she asked as she fit the hood of her cloak onto her head.

“Aye, but we’ve a rider who is to come along. Once he shows himself, we’ll be off.”

Eireanne wasn’t surprised—residents of County Galway often rode in or beside the Ballynaheath coaches. She always enjoyed the company on the nearly two-day drive, but for once she was thankful that whoever it was would accompany her on horseback, and not in the interior of the coach. She could scarcely tolerate having to chat about polite things such as the weather when she was bouncing about on a hard coach bench along a road pitted by constant winter rain.

The first few hours of the trip were truly wretched. Travel in and out of Dublin had rutted the roads, and it seemed as if the coach hit every hole and rock. Eireanne was tossed about like a sack of potatoes and concentrated on keeping her seat. Every once in a great while, she would catch sight of the rider moving to the front of the coach. He had a fine black horse, as tall as any she’d ever seen. He was covered in a black coat and a large-brimmed hat, from which rain poured in rivulets. She could make out nothing but his broad back and could not guess if he was young or old, tall or short.

They stopped late that day in Athlone, a village on the river Shannon, which they would cross the next morning. Eireanne was exhausted from the travel and went straight up to the room Mr. Donovan had arranged for her.

Unfortunately, rain greeted them again the next morning, and with a weary sigh, Eireanne took her place in the coach, wincing at the soreness when she sat on the bench.

But as they waited for the ferry, Mr. Donovan opened the door of the coach. “Beg your pardon, miss, but will you mind if Mr. Bristol waits within? The weather is foul.”

“Not at all,” she said, and the door instantly opened wider as a man surged into the interior. He had his hat pulled low over his eyes, but she noted that he was solidly built, with thick thighs and broad shoulders and big hands.

“Thank you,” he said, and fell onto the bench across from her, taking up what seemed like all the empty space in the interior of the coach. His legs, long and muscular, framed hers. His shoulders filled the bench across from her. “I told Mr. Donovan I would be happy to ride on the driver’s bench,” he said, shaking the water from his gloves. “But I am rather glad he insisted otherwise. The rain is coming down in sheets.”

He had a peculiar accent, Eireanne thought, and she watched as he tossed his gloves aside. He seemed to notice then that water was dripping off the brim of his hat, and he swept it off his golden head. He brushed his fingers through his hair and glanced up, a smile on a surprisingly handsome face.

But his smile froze, his eyes widened.

As the ferry pushed away from the banks, the gentleman gaped at Eireanne as if he was seeing an apparition. A sliver of horror raced through Eireanne, and she glanced down to see if something was amiss on her person.

“It’s
you,
” he said.

“Me?” Eireanne asked, looking up again and into a pair of maple brown eyes. Oh, but he was a handsome man, there was no doubt. High cheekbones, a square jaw—

“You don’t recall?”

Eireanne blinked. Recall what, for heaven’s sake?

“You saved my life.” He suddenly flashed a charmingly bright grin. “You are the angel who saved me.”

“I beg your pardon, but you have obviously confused me with someone of great valor. I assure you I have saved no one, and if I had, I am certain I would have remembered it.”

“It may not have seemed such a critical moment to you, but had you not come along and bid me to look at the horizon, I might have thrown myself overboard to end my misery. I believed you were an angel come to save me.”

Eireanne gasped with surprise. This was the helpless man she had seen on the deck of the
St. Mary
? But that man had seemed smaller. And grizzlier. That man had had the growth of a beard over skin the color of this morning’s dull sky. “That was
you
?” she asked disbelievingly.

“Do you not recognize me?” he asked laughingly. “I’ve cleaned up a bit, but on my honor, I am the same quivering mass of flesh you encountered on the deck of that ship.”

“No, I do not recognize you,” she said, smiling now. “I scarcely saw your face at all that night, and what little I did see was rather green.”

He laughed. “I was green through and through, all right. I think I can say with all confidence that I shall never be a sailor.”

This man looked entirely too virile to have been as dreadfully ill as he’d been. “At least you seem recovered and in good health.”

“As long as my feet are planted on solid earth, I seem to do all right. Or rivers,” he said, casting his arm to the window. “It’s the waves that plague me. Now this is indeed a pleasant surprise to find you again, madam. I might thank you for your kind help, as I desperately wished to do that night.”

She laughed. “Truthfully, sir, you did not look as if you even knew your name, much less were capable of speaking. But you are most welcome. I really did very little.”

“I will not allow you to diminish it,” he said cheerfully, and suddenly leaned forward, his arms on his knees, and flashed a charming smile once more—so charming that Eireanne could imagine that smile had been used to the gentleman’s advantage with any number of ladies and perhaps even a few men. “Your name,” he said earnestly. “I must have your name so that I might offer a proper thank-you.”

Eireanne arched a brow. “A
proper
thank-you, is it?”

His smile deepened. “I beg of you, give a name to my angel of mercy.”

Who could resist that smile? “Eireanne O’Conner,” she said.

“
Erin,
” he repeated.

He did not say her name precisely correct, but she liked his accent. “Eireanne, yes. And you are . . . ?”

“Henry Bristol at your service,” he said with a gallant incline of his head. He settled back and stretched his long legs so that they brushed up against her cloak on either side.

“Where do you call home, Mr. Bristol?”

“New York.”

“An American,” Eireanne said. She’d met only one American in her life, although Mary Chambers could scarcely call herself American any longer. She’d been reared in Europe from the age of ten onward and now attended the
Institut Villa de Amiels
alongside Eireanne. Nevertheless, Mary was the font of all American knowledge, and she had claimed once that American men were very bold in their thinking and their actions.

“You are from Ireland, obviously,” Mr. Bristol said.

“Yes, from Ballynaheath.”

Mr. Bristol’s smile brightened. “What a coincidence! That happens to be my destination. Apparently, it is much bigger than I believed.”

“It is not big at all,” she said. “There is the main house and, of course, the crofter cottages.”

Mr. Bristol frowned thoughtfully. “Then you must know the Earl of Donnelly.”

Eireanne laughed. “I know him as well as anyone could—he is my brother.”

Mr. Bristol’s eyes widened with surprise. “I’m shocked.”

Eireanne’s cheeks bloomed instantly, and she felt the uncomfortable feeling of being conspicuous, as she had often felt at Ballynaheath after the scandals. “Are you?” she asked, anxiously fingering the hem of her cloak sleeve. “I assure you, Mr. Bristol, that the things often said of us are much grander and exciting than the truth.”