Free The Secret Rose by Laura Parker Page B

wondered with misgiving as she lowered her umbrella, was she to survive the climate if the springs were warmer than summers in Ireland?
    “You’ll get the right of it,” the major assured her. “If you are not being met, please permit me to…” His voice trailed away as he spied his wife on the deck of the Black Opal . “Sarah! Sarah Scott! Pardon me a moment, Miss Fitzgerald,” he called over his shoulder as he started toward the pier.
    It happened so quickly Aisleen could not prevent herself from falling to her knees when she was shoved roughly in the back. The next instant, her purse was snatched from her wrist.
    “My purse!” she cried indignantly as she scrambled to her feet. “That boy—oh! There he goes! Stop him! Stop him!” Without waiting for aid, she started after the thief. All her money and the address of her employer were in that purse. If she lost it, she would be destitute and helpless.
    “Let me pass!” she cried to those who crowded the quay. To her dismay, the thief s path was opening up before him as if by magic while the seamen in her way did not move aside but stood grinning at her. They were deliberately allowing the boy to escape!
    “Out of my way!” she ordered again and tried to elbow her way through the wall of sailors. When they did not comply, without hesitation she stamped the pointed heel of her leather boot hard on the instep of the man nearest her. The burly man reeled away with a yelp of pain, and she dove through the opening he left.
    Her height served her well, for it allowed her to keep sight of the boy. But, hampered by the weight of her many petticoats and the rubbery-kneed feeling left from having been a long time at sea, she could not keep up with him, and he quickly outdistanced her.
    “Oh, no!” she whispered in dismay when he rounded the corner of a warehouse. Gasping for breath, she reached the corner only to find that he had disappeared. It was gone, all of it: her money, her instructions, and the crystal brooch her mother had given her. Anger swept her as she turned away from the empty alley. “Damn! Damn! Damn!”
    “Do you hear that, laddie? The lass must be a fearsome dragon, for all she looks a lady.”
    Aisleen looked up at the sound of the amused masculine voice with the caressing lilt of an Irish brogue. The next instant her gaze locked with the vivid blue of a stranger’s and she felt her world compress to the limits of those incredibly bright eyes.
    A wild tangle of black beard hid half his face, and a hat with turned-down brim cast a shadow low on his brow. She could smell the unpleasant musky odor of dirt and sweat and sheep emanating from his worn and stained clothes. Yet, for a moment, something as familiar and comforting as a childhood memory rose to mind.
    A scent like heather borne on a breeze from the Irish Sea suddenly enveloped her with poignant sweetness, faint at first and then nearly overwhelming in its pungency. The shadows of home reached out to her…
    The sensation vanished more quickly than her senses could record it, and an instant later Aisleen realized that the bushman held her thief firmly by the hair. “You caught him!”
    “That I did,” the stranger replied, easily avoiding the kicks and blows the boys aimed at him. “What will ye have me do with him, then?”
    She frowned at the boy. He was not as large as she had thought. He was nothing more than a filthy assortment of rags and angular bones topped by a thatch of sun-bleached hair.
    “Don’t hurt him,” she cautioned when the boy finally landed a blow high on his captor’s thigh and the man retaliated by smacking the flat of his hand against the side of the boy’s head.
    The stranger gave her a hard glance. “Hadn’t ye better make up yer mind?” He jerked a cry of pain from the boy in an effort to restrain him. “Ye were giving fair chase after the lad. Was it to thank him for relieving ye of this?”
    Aisleen looked at the purse he held out. “Thank you,”