Free The Cowboy's Tempestuous Irish Bride by Emma Ashwood Page B

feel better in no time at all.”  

    Maybe they will see what I see.  

    She thought about the last words to her horrified father and incidentally, half the population of the town.  

    What did she see when she look at her father?  

    A man consumed by anger and pain. A man so determined to blame someone for the death of his wife that he found the easiest target. His own daughter. How he made her suffer over the years. How she believed him when he told her time after time that it all her fault. How she truly wanted to die herself when he told her in a drunken rage that he wished it was her that had died that cold December day and not her mother. She had come close to removing the burden of her presence a couple of times. Yet she she always heard the words of her mother in her ears, “Stay strong angel girl. Stay strong.” For the best part of her life, she did stay strong, she developed a skin thicker than the very walls of Dublin Castle. But her father’s reaction and hostility towards her she could not forgive. Not now. And she was pretty sure not ever.  

    “Why can’t he just leave it alone Mary?” Siobhan asked. “Why can’t he let me find my own husband in my own time?” Although secretly she thought that would be a very long time indeed. She had seen how the loss of a loved one had turned her father inside out. The grief moulded him and made him a completely new person. Siobhan had long since thought that the only way to avoid such a thing was to avoid love. If love broke your heart in two then what was the point of it? Rather do without and spare yourself the pain she thought.  

    “He is your father,” Mary said in a consolatory tone. “He has to be seen to be trying to a arrange a suitor for you.” She paused for a second as though considering her next words. “And of course, all things being equal. I think he will be glad to have you off his hands. Especially after today.”  

    Siobhan erupted into laughter, “There is no doubt of that. I’m thankful he is up in Dublin tomorrow. I will only have to endure his wrath for one evening.”  

    “I have little doubt you will give as good as you get.”  

    Siobhan nodded with a grin on her face. How she wished that she had a normal family life. But that was not to be. Many times she had thought of running away to England or even further afield. But was the point without money behind her? More than once she can considered telling her father that she would leave for cash, but that somehow felt wrong. Now she was earning she would leave in her own time, on her own terms and most certainly after telling her father what she really felt.  

    “Are you staying for dinner?” Mary asked. “You are always welcome around this table.”  

    Siobhan thought for a moment between the two options available to her, a warm meal with a kindly old woman and her even older kinder husband or a cold frosty heated exchange with her father. She knew which she would rather choose, but she also knew the path that she should take.  

    “As much as that would be delightful Mary, I think not. My father is heading to Dublin in the morning. So I have three days of peace coming up. I feel that it will be better in the long run, if I go and listen to his rants now. “

    Mary nodded her head, “As you feel best.” She turn and picked up the bottle again and poured another generous measure into Siobhan’s glass. Siobhan raised her eyebrows quizzically in Mary’s direction. “Just one more for the road. I think you will need it when you get home.”  

    Siobhan didn’t disagree and swallowed the measure whole.  

CHAPTER THREE
Dublin Deal
    Dublin was a fair distance away from the fields of County Cork. Every three months Conner was forced to travel to the city to meet with his own bosses. The meeting always lasted a full day and Conner would stay both the evening before and the evening of the meeting in a hotel in the city, all generously paid for by the bank.