The Irish Bride (18 page)

“No woman will mold me,” David said, throwing his chest out. “Let a wife be obedient, I say. The man should do the teaching; the woman the learning.”

Neither of them had mentioned her kindness, her warmth, her humor. Things which, even if they were aware of them, had no value to them. David’s notion of a wife sounded like a dead bore—no wonder he was settling for Blanche.

“Rietta is a trifle masterful, perhaps,” Nick admitted.

“A trifle?” David echoed with a laugh. “Well, perhaps you’re man enough to take her.”

“Oh, yes.” Nick smiled with heartfelt confidence.

“Good, we’re in agreement.” Mr. Ferris rubbed his small hands together. “Now for the plan—David, m’boy, where’s the plans we ... ah, there they are.”

He drew out a folder, tied at the side with green ribbons.

He laboriously picked at the hard knot the ribbons had become. “I always tie so carefully just so this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.”

“What plan, sir?” Nick asked. He didn’t like this prowling about like a lovesick alley cat. Nor did he trust the others in this cellar cabal. Mr. Ferris seemed right in his element in the dim and dank room, and David was smiling like a drunken man given a pound for his off-key singing.

With a triumphant “ah,” Mr. Ferris opened the folder. “This is the plan, my son ... I mean, Sir Nicholas. When Rietta goes tomorrow night, the same as every Thursday, to that village of hovels at our gates, you follow her. She always goes afoot. I don’t know why I keep Garrity on— he does nothing and eats like the giant he was billed as with the circus. If the girls hadn’t made a regular pet of him ...”

“Come back, Mr. Ferris,” David said merrily. “You’ve gone too far ahead.”

“ ‘Tis clear enough. No need to make a piece of work over nothing. She’ll be glad enough to marry once she understands the seriousness of her position.”

“I don’t understand,” Nick said. “What are you talking of?”

David winked over Mr. Ferris’s head. “Let me just go over that once more, Mr. Ferris. It’s a trifle complicated. If I go over it with Nick, we’ll both be understanding it clearly.”

“There’s nothing complicated about it,” Mr. Ferris said sharply. “Stay straight on this road until you come to a fork. Take you the left. Over the rise and half a mile on, you’ll come to a little town—hardly more than ten houses all told. The gentleman’ll be waiting.”

“What gentleman?”

Mr. Ferris rolled his eyes. “The one that’s to marry you to Rietta, of course! You’ll abduct her when she comes home from the Claddagh, carry her off, and marry her out of hand. You’ll have my full consent.”

Nick stared at them. They grinned back like a pair of monkeys. “Does Bedlam know you are out?” he asked. “Or did the madness come on you suddenly?”

“There’s nothing mad about it,” Mr. Ferris said blusteringly. “ ‘Tis a simple matter of business. Marry the girl and you’ll never know a moment’s worry over money—I swear it. Keep on as you are and I’ll be dead before I can ever... ever hold my grandson in m’arms.” Mr. Ferris’s lower lip quivered. “I’m not growing younger as the days pass by. Soon I won’t have the strength to enjoy such simple pleasures. ‘Tis a dreadful thing to grow old, knowing that your line is fading.”

“Stop it, sir. You’re breaking my heart,” David said, wiping his eyes ostentatiously with a flourished handkerchief.

“I can’t marry Rietta against her will,” Nick said. “It’s impossible.”

“Won’t be against her will, m’boy.” Mr. Ferris stood up, apparently just so he could dig a finger into Nick’s ribs. “You mayn’t be aware but I saw what the pair of you were up to down in the hall this morning. I’m not sayin’ Rietta’ll go willing, but it’s a pound to cold pease porridge that she’ll be willin’ after the knot is tied good ‘n’ tight. She’s never been one to pine after salmon in the sea if she’s caught trout in her net.”

“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “It’s impossible. I can’t steal a wife.”

“From what I hear,” David put in, “stealing brides was quite the fashion not so long ago. My own grandmother was abducted from Limerick by an earl. Of course, he returned her, eventually.”

Nick laughed but still shook his head at his friend. “It’s out of the question.”

The two other men looked long and hard at one another.

Finally, David shrugged and half turned away. “I don’t approve, but I shan’t argue.”

Mr. Ferris pulled out a letter from his folder, strangely familiar. “Recognize this?” he asked, showing the top where a red crest was embossed.

“How did you come by that?”

“Found it. I read it, too.”

“You had no right—but you knew that.”

“I’ve my fair share of curiosity.” Mr. Ferris tapped the letter against his thumbnail. “Have you the money to pay off this debt? I don’t think you do. I have and I’ll do it, over and above what I offered you today, if you’ll marry Rietta this very day.”

“You cannot buy me, Mr. Ferris. Nor can you blackmail me. Now give me my letter and I’ll say good day.”

“Don’t be like that,” Mr. Ferris said good-humoredly. “I’m making you a fair offer. All your little troubles will vanish as if by magic just by becoming m’son-in-law. Think of your father’s debts. Think of your poor sisters. Nice girls, if the one upstairs is to be judged by, but even good men are hard to come by without a bit of clink in the stocking’s foot, eh?”

Nick did think of these things. Emma’s desperation had driven her to near-fatal folly. Amelia’s love affair was no more likely to progress well. When their bruised hearts recovered, they would no doubt find other men to marry, and then dowries.... Furthermore, he thought of his mother, who had troubles enough without poverty adding to them.

But most of all, he thought of Rietta.

That there was something between them—if no more than physical attraction—could not be denied. His desire for her was like a humming in his ear, always present and impossible to be rid of. If he married her out of hand, he could silence it. Not immediately, for even if nothing more than her pride prevented him from coming to her bed, there could be a long delay before he was satisfied. But he was no closer to having her now, for she never would change her no to yes without a great deal of time passing. Time that he did not have.

But could she forgive having that choice taken from her?

“You seem to feel that there is some urgency to have Rietta wed soon. Why is that, when you’ve already waited this long?”

Mr. Ferris shuffled his feet and began to flatter him grossly. “I’ve never seen another man your equal, Sir Nicholas. David here vouches for your honesty, your sobriety, and your other good qualities. And, I’ll not hide from you, your title makes you a most appealing prospect for a son-in-law. Besides which, Rietta likes you and that, let me tell you, is a first.”

“That’s true,” David added. “Rietta had never cared twopence for any other man.” He laughed. “Damn, if you aren’t a conqueror of virgin territory!”

Nick shook his head, ignoring the crudity. “I can’t do it. Not even my circumstances can excuse such cold-bloodedness.”

A change passed over Mr. Ferris’s face. Gone was the amiable, rather foolish tradesman. Instead, a kind of low cunning gleamed in his small eyes, while his forehead came down and his jaw moved forward pugnaciously. “There’s nothing for it, then. I’ll not have the girl in the house another day. I’ll turn her out. Let her find a husband on the streets.”

“Sir!” David protested, no doubt seeing his dream of Blanche moving farther away.

Nick waited to hear what else Mr. Ferris might say.

“Aye, let her take her airs and graces out of my house. I’ve done all I care to for her. There comes a time when a man needs his freedom from family ties.”

“What about Blanche?” David asked.

“Let Greeves have her. He’s got the chinks to stand her nonsense.”

“What of the family curse?” Nick asked as a last resort.

“Yes ... well, I’ll risk it. Or better yet, I’ll marry the chit off to the first good-for-nothing I meet tomorrow, whether Traveler, tinker, or tailor. Let Fate decide what becomes of her.”

A wise man, Nick knew, would have gone on saying no to their very improper plan forever, walking away with a vow never to see Rietta again. But whatever wisdom he’d once possessed had been blown away with the cannon smoke at Waterloo. Whether Mr. Ferris meant his threat or not, it was impossible to think of Rietta living at his mercy for one more day.

“Very well. Tell me again where to go, and what of the license?”

“You have my consent and I have the license,” Mr. Ferris said, his smile returning. Why had Nick never noticed how pointed and sharp the other man’s teeth were? He rubbed his plump hands together. “The rest is up to you.”

Chapter Eleven

Rietta stepped out of Mrs. Athy’s cottage and into the cool sea-scented night, snatching a breath from the hands of the wind. The crescent moon shone down through the mist, like the glimpse of a lamp behind a window on a frosty night. There’d be rain before morning.

With a sigh, she turned away from the bridge that led back to the streets of Galway. Instead, she walked to the end of the quay to look out into the bay. Like ghosts, the fishing boats lay at anchor, their rust-colored sails furled until the dawn. She wished that she had nothing more to do than wait in a one-room cottage for her seafaring husband to come home.

She had been restless and uneasy all day. Try as she might to fix her thoughts elsewhere, they returned relentlessly to those moments when Nick had crushed her against him. The very memory was enough to make her blood sing crazily, but the thought of kissing him again made her head swim. His touch, his kiss, had awakened something in her, a new vitality that refused to return to serenity.

She’d invented and discarded a hundred methods for seeing him again, whether sending a message by Emma, gone home this afternoon, or going to Greenwood herself tomorrow to take up Lady Kirwan’s invitation. She told herself she had no intention of being seized upon in that fashion ever again, but her very bones ached with the need to have him touch her. He seemed to have no reluctance when it came to kissing her. Let them be alone again and Rietta knew the inevitable would happen.

She did not believe herself to be completely wanton. After all, she had twenty-some years of celibacy behind her. She’d never been tempted by desire before so she did not think she was entirely without moral restraint. Except when Nick was near. Then she seemed to lose the natural shyness of maidenhood with no more cajolery than the brush of his fingertips.

Rietta put her hands up to smooth back the neat bands of hair under the edge of her bonnet. Her gloves were soft against her forehead, soothing away her incipient headache. If she had only herself to consider, she’d cheerfully go with Nick, whether for matrimony or for whatever end he chose. But she had to think of her father and Blanche. They needed her and she would not abandon them even for Nicholas Kirwan, his title, or his strong hands that seemed to know of their own accord just where and how to touch her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she said aloud, whipping off her bonnet and letting the sea wind cool her overheated face. A loose lock of hair streamed like a pennon as she turned to go home.

She’d spent years learning self-control. She’d repressed natural yearnings for a home and husband of her own. She’d convinced herself that she was valued for the good she could do. One caress from a man should not be permitted to blast that training into nothingness.

She’d expected to be wooed and won sensibly, calmly, and at a steady pace; not in this hurry-scurry fashion. She’d not see Nick again; that would be safest. As for the pain she’d feel, she would apply what she’d learned from experience and show nothing of it. Eventually, the pain would lessen and she could be free of all except the faintest of tender scars.

If only she didn’t have the feeling that too many of those scars would render her heart too painful to endure any more. Then she would turn into a cat-keeping old maid, bitter and resentful that her life had not kept its youthful promise.

“So be it,” she said with a ghost of a laugh. “Better that than to be married to the wrong man.”

The sound of a coach rattling over the cobblestones on the other side of the narrow channel between Galway proper and the Claddagh made Rietta look up from her pensive contemplation of a neat arrangement of coiled down falls of rope.

It was late for travelers, and most of the villagers wouldn’t be riding in a fine carriage. Perhaps someone had fallen ill and needed a doctor from town. Should she offer her assistance? She was useful in a sickroom.

Rietta started walking quickly over the rough stones. The carriage had pulled to the side of the road, its lamps dark. Against the night, it was like an intaglio carved in onyx, a shadow on black velvet. Rietta slowed her pace, step by step, feeling a sudden sharp reluctance to pass the carriage. But there was only one way over the river’s mouth and back to the safety of the streets of Galway. That way lay past the carriage.

Settling her bonnet on her head, holding her chin high, Rietta started past. Despite her attitude, she couldn’t help stealing a glance, hoping her bonnet concealed the turn of her gaze.

The door swung open and Rietta stopped dead a few paces away. “Get in,” said a well-known voice. “I came to meet you.”

Rietta exhaled in relief. “Why don’t you light the lamps? I didn’t know what to think.”

“See to it, Garrity.”

“Yes, sir.”

At ease now, Rietta came up to the carriage. “I’m glad you came tonight. Usually, I don’t mind walking home alone but I’ve got the collywobbles or something. I almost don’t dare look over my shoulder for fear of seeing what I should not.”

“There is a touch o’ chill in the air.”

She put out her hand for assistance and mounted with his help. “Well, Father ... ,” she began, breaking off suddenly when she saw they were not alone. Two men were present, sitting silent as statues against the cushions. They each wore black domino cloaks, the hoods cast over their heads, creating impenetrable shadows in the folds.

“Father?”

The door had no sooner shut behind her than Garrity whipped up the horses. “What is all this?”