Free The Irish Bride by Alexis Harrington Page A

sleeve
across his eyes. Then he reached into his pocket. “I got this while
ye were choosing the blankets.” He withdrew a plain, thin silver
band and held it out on his open palm. “Since we’re wedded, I
thought you should have a ring. Tommy gave Clare my mother’s
wedding ring when he married her. This one isn’t as grand—it has no
carving on it or writing inside. But, well, I thought ye might like
to have it.”
    Surprised, she reached out a tentative
hand. “I guess I hadn’t thought of a ring. Everything has been
so—so—”
    “ Desperate.”
    She sighed. “Aye.
Desperate.”
    “ Still, I know how much
little things like this mean to a woman.”
    She tipped a glance at him. “Yes, I’m
sure ye do.” He looked sincere, but she couldn’t let herself accept
that. She remembered the neighborhood gossip last summer when he’d
taken wildflowers to Bridget McDermot every day for three weeks.
Everyone—including Bridget, no doubt—had expected to hear news of a
proposal. But it hadn’t come, and Aidan moved on to Moira Flannery.
Moira had received no flowers that they knew of, but she and Aidan
had been seen walking in the moonlight often enough. For a while,
anyway. And his prior history with women was no different. Still,
that had all happened in the past, and there was no point in being
ungracious, especially now.
    “ Thank you, Aidan,” she said
simply. Taking the ring from his palm, she slipped it on her finger
and held out her hand for his inspection. “It fits just
fine.”
    That earned her a faint, satisfied
smile, as if she had accomplished some spectacular feat. And for an
instant, she saw that look again in his eyes, possessive, without
beginning or end, beyond place or time.
    “ That’s good. I only guessed
at the size.” He glanced up. “Farrell,” he said softly, and nodded
toward the receding island of their birth, “look your
last.”
    Farrell turned to let her eyes drink
their fill. Ireland shone in the brilliant sunset, distant and
green and luminous, like the gemstone it was often compared to.
Overhead, gulls squawked in the rigging as the sails filled and
they left the last of the cove waters to set out upon the
ocean.
    Somehow, someday she would return to
the land of her birth. Somehow. But right now she had control over
nothing but her heart and her own mind. She could let grief and
fear consume her, or she could choose to survive. But for Farrell,
there was really just one choice. She would go to America and she
would survive.
    “ Go mbeannaí Dia
duit ,” Aidan murmured to the tiny emerald
on the eastern horizon.
    “ Go mbeannaí Dia
duit ,” she echoed faintly, her wet gaze
fixed on the tiny speck of land as she crossed herself with a
trembling hand.
    May God bless you.

    CHAPTER FIVE

    “ A murderer , ye say! And a thief! Didn’t
I just know it!” The owner of The Rose and Anchor, who called
herself Kate, wore a shocked expression and slammed a meaty fist on
the bar. “I thought the pair had the odd look about ’em. But them
so weary and tattered and all, I couldn’t turn ’em away. I sold
them stew and let them a room. What else could a God-fearing woman
do but show a little Christian charity?”
    This question raised hoots of derisive
laughter from nearby patrons.
    “ God-fearin’!”
    “ Christian! That’s a ripe
one, Katie, girl.”
    “ I could use some o’ that
charity meself, Kate.”
    “ Shut yer filthy gobs, the
rotten lot of ye! Phaw! ” she bawled at them, her braying voice gurgling with phlegm.
Then she favored Noel Cardwell with a helpless, ingratiating smile
and said, “I’m just a poor widow woman and I have me business to
run. I can’t be too choosey
when . . . ”
    While she prattled on, Noel eyed the
massive, ochre-toothed hag of an innkeeper and wished for perhaps
the hundredth time that he’d never let his father maneuver him into
making this miserable trip. And he silently cursed Aidan O’Rourke
for stealing his woman—for