The Irish Bride

  1THE IRISH BRIDE

  by

  Alexis Harrington

  Copyright © 2003 by Alexis Harrington

  www.alexisharrington.com

  Smashwords Edition

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  CHAPTER ONE

  February 1855

  County Cork, Ireland

  Fear made Farrell Kirwan want to run the all the way home, but the road was slick with mud and she’d already fallen once. She hurried along as quickly as she could, her side aching with the effort, her throat burning from her dry, raspy breathing.

  Now and then she glanced over her shoulder to see if he was following her, but in the pale winter twilight, she saw no one. She pulled her shawl closer against the chill, but it wasn’t long enough to cover both her head and the ragged tear in the front of her uniform that reached from neck to waist.

  The housemaid’s job at Greensward Manor paid nine pounds per year, money the family was desperate for. But nothing was worth this humiliation. No amount could force her to endure Noel Cardwell’s rough, proprietary groping, and at last she’d slapped him. It had been a spontaneous, foolish act on her part, she knew, but she had only to glance at her worn chemise gaping from between the raw edges of her bodice to know that given the chance, she would have done the same again.

  It was bad enough that her brother Michael worked for the Lord Arthur Cardwell and his son Noel, collecting rents from his own friends and family, and evicting them when the couldn’t pay. Then Michael had talked her into accepting the servant’s position. If she went to work at Greensward Manor, he’d told her, she could escape their cousin’s overcrowded cottage. With time, hard work, and a pleasant smile for Noel, she might climb the domestic hierarchy to special assignments and privilege. Farrell was innocent but she was no fool. A smile alone wouldn’t gain privileges from a man like Noel Cardwell. At least not the kind she wanted. As it had turned out, she’d been right. He’d begun baiting her with his lewd innuendos her first week there. These he’d followed with the occasional brush of a hand against her leg or her posterior, always with no witnesses. Despite her attempts to discourage him, the situation had worsened. This afternoon, he’d trapped her in the library and assaulted her. It had been more than she would stand. She realized now that she never should have accepted the position at all.

  But in a tiny house overflowing with children and three adults, her cousin Clare had grown increasingly short-tempered. Her husband Tommy had muttered about all the mouths he had to feed, never failing to glance at Farrell when he said it. Until she and Liam O’Rourke could marry, Farrell had felt the servant’s job was her only option, even though the family had raised a great fuss when she’d announced her intentions.

  She turned again to look behind her. Was that a figure on the road behind her in the gathering nightfall? Maybe not. The purpling dusk played tricks on her eyes, making her heart thump even harder in her chest. Certainly, Cardwell would not let this offense go unpunished. She’d seen the cold look of implicit retaliation in his eyes as clearly as she’d seen the red imprint of her hand on his cheek.

  Finally reaching the little valley that was home to what remained of a dozen families, she staggered to a stop when she came upon the pile of rocks and thatch that only yesterday had been the cottage her betrothed Liam and his brother Aidan shared with their father, Sean. It had been standing when she’d come home to visit on her half day off.

  Farrell swallowed and swallowed, but her throat was so dry it felt as if the sides were stuck together. She stared at the ruins, stunned, disbelieving. A jumble of broken furniture lay amid the rubble. Scores of footsteps had churned the mud in the yard into a sucking morass. She’d seen this kind of destruction before, just last week in fact, when the McCreadys had been evicted—

  When Michael had evicted them.

  Michael’s horse was tied to the bare-limbed tree in front of the debris. Please no, don’t let this be Michael’s doing, God, please— She turned to run along the road toward home, her zigzagging lope like that of a panicked man drunk on poteen.

  A gray, eerie stillness hung over the cottages she passed. Usually dogs and barefoot children all scampered back and forth over the green, rocky turf. Here and there she saw a mouse or a bird, but except for the smoking chimneys, she would have thought the valley was deserted.

  She ran to Clare’s tiny house with footsteps that skidded on the mud. Gripping the torn edges of bodice with a shaking hand, she pushed open the door. There she found the family standing in a tight circle with their heads bowed, as if in prayer. The bleakness outside turned to vaguely palpable tension in here.

  She recognized the three O’Rourke brothers, Liam, Aidan, and Tommy. The last stood with his arm looped over Clare’s narrow shoulders. Even their children were crowded into the circle in the corner. Sean O’Rourke lay on a pallet by the fire. As a group, they jumped at her entrance.

  “Auntie Farrell,” five-year-old Sheelagh wailed. Her thin cheeks wet with tears, the little girl ran across the room and hid her face in Farrell’s skirts. The other children began sobbing with her.

  “Christ, Farrell, ye gave us a turn!” Tommy exhaled, turning to look at her. His own face was the shade of new plaster, making his rust-colored hair all the more striking. “What are ye doing here?” he demanded sharply. “I thought you’d cast your lot with Lord Cardwell, just like your turncoat brother.”

  “Tommy!” Clare snapped at her husband. Holding baby Timothy on her arm, she broke from her husband’s grip and left the circle. She eyed Farrell’s torn dress. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph—what’s happened to ye, then?”

  Farrell felt her face flood with heat. “Um, Noel Cardwell, he, well . . . ”

  Aidan turned and gave her a sharp, curious look. He would, she thought, the lady’s man of the family. The one who got into fights and drank and gambled.

  Liam stepped closer. “Farrell, are ye all right? Did he hurt you?”

  “No, I got away before he could more than rip my dress.”

  Clare nodded, tight-lipped. “So ye came to see that the blackguard is as rotten as a barrel of old apples, did you? Didn’t I tell you not to have anything to do with him? Didn’t I beg ye to stay here instead of going off to be a servant to the Cardwells?”

  Farrell refrained from mentioning that Clare and Tommy had also carped about the extra mouth they had to feed with her living there. “I thought the money would help.”

  “Aye, well, it took Cardwell, what, just two months to reveal his true intentions? And what did you do?”

  “I slapped him and ran home.”

  Clare and Tommy both groaned. “Oh, God—haven’t we enough trouble on our hands?” Tommy asked. “That should turn over the final spade of earth for our graves.”

  “What? Why?” Farrell’s heart began thudding heavily in her chest again. Something was wrong. In her own panic, she hadn’t paid much attention to the charged atmosphere in the room, believing she’d brought it with her when she ran in. Now, she nudged Sheelagh out of her way and stepped closer, trying to see past the men’s shoulders. “What’s happened?” The group parted long enough for Farrell to glimpse something—or someone—on the floor at their feet before they closed ranks.

  Clare shut the door. She’d been pretty in her youth but now she looked careworn and older than her years, as though she rarel
y slept. “There’s been an accident.”

  “Accident?” Someone was dead, someone must be dead. Dear God, I’m begging you, don’t let it be Michael’s doing, please—

  Liam took her elbow. “Aye, lass, there’s nothing else to call it, and nothing to be done. When Michael hit his head—hush, weans, so I can be hearing myself—” he said to the crying youngsters. Their tears slowed to sniffles and whimpers.

  Farrell pulled free of Liam’s grip and pushed her way between Aidan and Tommy. A familiar, well-dressed form lay on the floor, the head covered with a piece of old sacking. She jerked the cloth away to find Michael’s lifeless, blue-gray face.

  At the sight the children began howling again.

  “Michael!” Farrell dropped to her knees beside her brother and touched his chin with a shaking hand. Beneath his head, a small pool of blood spread over the floor like a crimson halo. Anguish stole most of her voice. “H-how did it happen?”

  There was a shuffling of feet and clearing of throats, but no answer to her question. Annoyed by their dithering, she looked up at the men. “How? Don’t any of ye know?”

  “Aye, Farrell. I know. And I think you do, too.” Aidan O’Rourke, dark-haired and wide-shouldered in a family of reedy redheads, was the only one who would meet her gaze. He hunkered beside her. His upper lip and left brow bore nasty cuts, and a purple bruise swelled his jaw.

  Even before he spoke again, Farrell guessed what he was about to say. Images flashed through her mind like the rapidly turning pages of a picture book—of Aidan and Michael, always arguing, circling each other like two he-goats, even as children. How they had hated each other. Senselessly, ceaselessly. She had never understood why. More than once she’d heard Aidan wish her brother dead, and Michael cast the same curse upon Aidan. And now it had come to pass—one of them was dead. Michael, her brother, all that had been left of her immediate family.

  “Don’t say it!” she said. “Please, Aidan, don’t!”

  “But it’s the truth, Farrell! He came to evict us, and we’ve paid our rent all along! He tore it down, with the help of his four hired thugs,” he replied, as if that justified the taking of Michael’s life. “Ye must try to understand.”

  “Understand? I know that Michael earned your hatred, Aidan. But to pay with his life? Did his death restore your cottage?”

  “He ordered our da thrown out into the road—for God’s sake, he put his foot on Da’s back and wouldn’t let him get up! And he said things I wouldn’t take from any man. I just—”

  Farrell couldn’t look at old Sean lying on the pallet, and she didn’t want to hear what Michael had done. It hurt even more. “So you killed him?”

  Aidan fell silent suddenly, as if even he agreed that nothing her brother had done could justify his actions. He gazed down at Michael’s unnaturally still face, and the next words were little more than a whisper. “I didn’t kill him. His bootlicks tried to hold me back—I got these for my trouble.” He gestured at his injured face. But I lost my senses, and got away from them. I butted him in the belly, and he fell backward and cracked his head on a cairn. It was an accident, Farrell, I swear before God. I never—”

  Pain burst inside her, driving out all caution. Consumed with grief, she drew back and punched Aidan’s shoulder with all the strength she could put behind her arm. The sound of it thumped like a rock falling on hard earth, and could be heard over the sobbing of Clare’s children and their grandfather’s hacking cough. Then silence blanketed the room.

  “I don’t want your explanations! Is fighting all ye know, Aidan O’Rourke?” she demanded, glaring at him. Her voice broke with anger, and tears made her throat ache. “I would have talked him out of evicting you, had you only come for me.”

  “You think so?” he asked, his tone sharp and bitter. He stood up and flexed his shoulder, and she quailed a bit, wondering if he would strike her back. “Then it’s little ye know about people, lass, if you believe that. I swear on my mother’s grave, I didn’t mean to hurt your brother. But I wouldn’t stand by and do nothing while he threw Da into the road to die, and then put the battering ram to our house because Cardwell ordered it. Michael enjoyed what he did to us, Farrell, leaving us with no place to live in the dead of winter. He enjoyed every minute of it. I saw it in his eyes. Him with fancy clothes on his back and good food in his belly.” Even now, anger overshadowed the remorse in his eyes. “I couldn’t abide it.”

  It was true, all true, her heart wept. Aidan’s every word lanced her like knife thrusts but there was no questioning them, because she knew they were true. Michael had evicted a lot of families, some of whom had paid their rent faithfully, all at the behest of the Cardwells. She’d even heard rumors, ugly and vicious, that Michael was not only cheating the tenants, but his employers as well. Money was missing, it had been whispered, and Michael spent freely, as if he were a lord himself. How could she blame Aidan for defending his home and family? What real man could have done less?

  She stole a glance at frail, dear Sean, whose breathing was labored with the sickness plaguing his lungs. No remedy she’d tried for his illness had helped much. Pressing her hand to her skirt pocket, she felt the little figure of Brigit, her favorite saint, hard against her hip. It was Sean who had carved it for her. She remembered that he used to whittle small toys for all the children in the clachan, including Michael. Yet he had evicted Sean anyway.

  With a shaking hand, she drew the sacking over his face, knowing as she did the grief welling within her was not for the man who lay there, but for the child he had once been. There was nothing left of the baby brother she remembered. Over the years, he’d grown into a selfish, cruel man who possessed not a shred of decency.

  Farrell felt eyes on her, Tommy’s, Clare’s, and even the children’s. Shame. It devastated her, making her dread having to meet their gazes. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice shaking, “so sorry. I would have stopped him if I could.”

  “Come on, lass.” Aidan put a hand under her elbow and helped her to her feet. “No one could have stopped Michael.”

  “What will become of us?” Clare asked, drawing her other children to her. “We’ve got him here on our floor—” she nodded at the prostrate form, “—Farrell under our roof again, and Noel Cardwell angry with her. The Cardwells will send the authorities, and they’ll arrest us all for sure now! What are we going to do?”

  Everyone spoke at once in hushed, emphatic murmurs, laying blame, lamenting the turn of events, cursing the English government—all of which accomplished nothing.

  Only Aidan remained quiet, staring at the low blue flames of the peat fire.

  “There’s only one thing we can do. We must leave,” he said, keeping his back to the group. “If we’re gone, the rest of you might be safe when the authorities come nosing around, asking questions and looking for us. As long as ye can keep payin’ your rent, Cardwell might let ye stay. Liam, Da—ye’ll have to move in here with Tommy and Clare. But if they can’t find us, eventually they’ll give up and leave ye alone.”

  “‘We?’ Who is ‘we?’ ” Liam asked.

  Aidan turned then and locked his dark blue gaze with Farrell’s, where she still stood next to Michael’s body. “Farrell and I.”

  “Farrell! Where can a woman go by herself?” Liam demanded, his expression alive with rare animation.

  Aidan lifted a brow at his brother’s question. Then he drew a deep breath and faced the family. “She won’t be alone. I mean to take her with me.” He glanced at her torn dress again. “Noel Cardwell isn’t going to let this insult to his manhood and status go unanswered.”

  Everyone spoke at once, again in an uproar.

  “She’s your brother’s intended, Aidan!”

  Farrell glowered at Aidan and his bad joke, hoping to freeze him with coldness. “You’re not funny a-tall, I hope ye know.”

  Aidan stepped toward them, his expression grim. “And neither is the idea of hanging or rotting in prison. But that’s what will happen if we
stay, and we’ll doom the whole family.” He gestured at the tiny one-room cottage around them, dark now but for the firelight. “They’ll tear this place down, too, if they find us here, and then none of us will have shelter.” He fixed Farrell with a hard look. “D’ye want to be responsible for that?”

  “No, but . . . saints preserve us, you’re serious! I’m not going anywhere with you. I am to marry Liam.”

  Aidan’s exasperation was vivid on his face, and made even more so by the cuts and bruises it bore, obvious souvenirs from the afternoon’s events. “Aye, in prison with rats for witnesses?”

  Farrell’s chest tightened and she pressed her clenched fist to her mouth. “No—”

  Tommy put a hand up. “Hold a minute now, Farrell. Maybe Aidan has the right idea.”

  “He might at that,” old Sean put in from his pallet, rubbing his bristled chin thoughtfully. “Ye’ll have to take Michael away from here, Tommy. Down the road a far distance. Make it look as if he took a spill from his horse so no one suspects foul doings. Praise God we’re well thought of in the clachan. The neighbors won’t breathe a word of what happened.”

  “No,” Aidan interjected. He met Tommy’s gaze. “Ye’ll take him back to our cottage. Lay him where he fell, with his head against the rocks. And ask the neighbors to tell the authorities exactly what happened.” He glanced apologetically at Sean. “I know ye mean well, Da, that ye wish only to spare me the blame. But it’s too risky by half. The constabulary might hear of the fight from Michael’s thugs. They’ll know I had a hand in his death. If you try to protect me, they’ll only suspect you of wrongdoing, too.”

  “But, Aidan,” Tommy said. “We’re talkin’ of a murder charge. Think, man! ‘Tis no matter that he pushed ye beyond limits or that any man would’ve done the same. Let us do as Da says and take Michael down the road. Otherwise, they’ll charge you with murder and you’ll dance at the end of a rope of they when catch you.”