I Kissed an Earl (and I Liked It) (That Wicked O'Shea Family Book 1)

by Merry Farmer

  “Isn’t there anything you can do to make the process easier?” Christian asked from the corner of the room, where he had been allowed to pace during Marie’s delivery.

  Everyone from the doctor—who had gotten himself thrown out of the room an hour before for irritating Marie—to the attending nurse had insisted men had no place at a birth, but Marie had absolutely refused to be parted from her husband.

  “Babies come in their own time and in their own way, my lord,” the midwife said in her soothing voice without looking at him.

  Marie was too busy having her body split open to pay much mind to the exchange, but she did manage to shout, “Christian, come here this instant!”

  Christian launched toward the bed, startling the nurse who stood ready with a receiving blanket beside a basin of water. “Yes, my darling?” he asked when he reached her side.

  He made the mistake of swaying close enough to her that Marie was able to grab his arm as her pain reached an alarming crescendo. She squeezed so hard that Christian cried out as well, half crumpling on the bed.

  “This is your doing,” Marie ground out, even as most of her effort went into bringing the baby into the world. “You and your naked.”

  She wasn’t certain if she’d spoken a coherent thought or not, but Christian seemed to accept his part in the whole thing. “I know, I know,” he gasped, “and I’m sorry. But I won’t promise not to do it again.”

  Marie cried out—partly in pain, partly because she could feel the moment had come as the midwife cooed soothingly and reached between her legs, and partly because she wanted to laugh at Christian’s off-color comment but couldn’t.

  “Here we go, my lady, here we go,” the midwife called out, an excited look in her eyes.

  The moment was horrible, wonderful, unbelievable, and indescribable, but within seconds, Marie felt as though she’d been turned inside out, physically and emotionally, as a tiny cry rent the air.

  “Here she is, my lady,” the midwife said in a delighted voice. She nodded for the nurse to come forward with some sort of clamp and scissors.

  All of the pain, all of the stress and misery were forgotten entirely the moment the midwife lifted the mottled, bloody, and squalling baby girl to show Marie.

  “It’s a baby,” Christian gasped, astonishment and bliss lighting his expression. “You actually had a baby.”

  “We did,” Marie corrected him. She reached for the tiny girl as the midwife handed her over, then began the afterbirth clean-up. Marie wanted to laugh and cry and gasp in wonder as she held her daughter for the first time.

  “You did all the work,” Christian said, laughing and weeping with her as he sank onto the bed, sliding his arm around Marie to support her.

  She needed the support as well. Labor had only lasted seven hours, but she was more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life. She was also more in love than she’d ever been, with both her daughter and Christian. She leaned her head against his chest, closing her eyes for a moment and counting her blessings over how lucky she was.

  “She appears to be fine and healthy,” the midwife said as she and the nurse took care of the aftermath. A wry grin lit the woman’s face. “Perhaps a little too healthy, if you’ll forgive my impertinence. No one is going to believe that darling girl is three months early.”

  Marie knew she should be embarrassed by giving birth six months after her wedding to Christian. In truth, it could have been worse. They’d caused enough of a scandal by marrying only six months after the deaths of Christian’s father and brother. Even by modern standards, it hadn’t been enough time for proper mourning. But everyone in County Antrim was already whispering about the need for such scandalous haste. Those whispers had grown in volume when Marie began to show within two months of the wedding. It was exactly the sort of thing society expected from one of those wicked O’Shea sisters.

  Neither Marie nor Christian cared one whit, though.

  “I can’t stop staring at her,” Christian said, his voice tight with emotion. He nestled closer to Marie, reaching around to stroke their daughter’s head. “And to think that something so alive and miraculous could come hard on the heels of such tragedy.”

  “The natural successor to death is life,” Marie reasoned. “Just as the natural progression after sorrow is joy.”

  “Joy,” Christian repeated, resting his cheek against the top of Marie’s head. “What do you think of that for a name?”

  Marie’s heart flipped excitedly. “I think that would be perfect,” she said. She beamed down at their daughter. “Welcome to the world, Joy.”

  “May you bring as much happiness and excitement to this world as your dear mama has brought to me,” Christian added, brushing his thumb over little Joy’s brow, then kissing Marie’s cheek. “Though you’re as likely as not to bring chaos, mischief, and trouble to the world as anything else. Just like your mama.”

  Marie laughed. “Just like your papa, you mean,” she corrected him.

  “Just like the both of us,” Christian said, settling the matter.

  Marie glanced up at him, meeting his grin with one of her own. She couldn’t imagine her life being any more perfect than it was with Christian and their family.

  I hope you enjoyed Marie and Christian’s story! They were such fun characters to write. And so are the rest of the O’Shea sisters! Like Colleen. Gosh, she really hates Lord Boleran. She finds him boorish, arrogant, and overbearing. Or does she just think those things to hide an entirely different set of feelings she has for him? What happens when a mystery causes her to go snooping on his property in the middle of the night? And will Colleen be able to survive the scandal of being caught? Find out in If You Wannabe My Marquess. Keep clicking to get started reading Chapter One!

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  Ballymena, Ireland – September, 1888

  It was a simple fact of nature that men considered it their purpose in life to dominate and manage women. Colleen O’Shea had seen the nefarious intentions of the male of the species play out over and over. She’d see it in the way the schoolmaster who had been hired to serve as tutor for her brother, Lord Fergus O’Shea, Earl of Ballymena, had fawned over Fergus and snubbed her and her sisters when all they’d wanted to do was learn. She’d noted it when the great lords of County Antrim had looked down their noses at the fine, intelligent ladies they asked to dance at balls and soirees, as if all the ladies had to offer were shapely bosoms instead of bright minds. And she noticed it in the way Fergus had declared his intention to bully and badger all of his sisters into marriage, now that he’d returned to Ireland. He’d already managed to catch Colleen’s sister, Marie, in his marriage trap—although, to be honest, Marie hadn’t put up much of a fight. That had more to do with her new husband, Lord Christian Darrow, Earl of Kilrea, and his handsome face and teasing eyes, than convincing Fergus might have done.

  Colleen, however, was determined to fight her brother’s meddling and the institution of marriage tooth and nail. She had no intention of falling victim to the domination that so many men still thought they were entitled to. Hadn’t they read the exciting works of the progressive women who were heralding a new age of female independence? Had they never heard of the lines o
f Annie Besant, Emmeline Pankhurst, or Harriet McIlquham?

  Fergus most likely thought his heart was in the right place as he scoured northern Ireland for men to marry his womenfolk, but as Colleen and her sisters well knew, he had committed one major mistake while attempting to appease them. In exchange for curtailing their freedom by forcing them to move from the seaside cottage, where the four of them had been residing, back into the main house of Dunegard Castle, he had given them all bicycles of the highest quality and most modern design. Said bicycles enabled the sisters to embrace their freedom rather than curtailing it.

  “Are you certain it was a good idea to strap barrels of beer to the back of these things?” Colleen panted, peddling the last few yards through the back alley behind Ballymena’s main street. She’d long since broken out in a sweat, and she was reasonably certain her legs wouldn’t support her once they stopped in back of The Hangman Pub and dismounted to deliver their order.

  “This is the perfect solution to our transportation problems,” Shannon—Colleen’s oldest sister—said, out of breath herself. “Since Fergus forbid us to use the cart.”

  “Which one of you alerted him to our ongoing commercial activities?” Marie huffed, straining to pedal the last bit of the journey to the pub.

  Ahead, in the alley, Mr. Coney, the pub’s owner, had stepped out of the pub and was watching the four sisters struggle forward with their loads. He wore a grin that Colleen found far too indulgent for her tastes.

  “It wasn’t me,” Chloe—her youngest sister—said in a hurry. Chloe’s face was red from exertion, and her ginger hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat.

  It was likely that all four of them looked more like exhausted farmhands and not the titled ladies they were. If anyone had seen the sisters of an earl loitering in the alley in back of a common pub, puffing from the effort of riding bicycles laden with barrels of beer, none of them would have withstood the scandal, regardless of what advances the likes of Emmeline Pankhurst was making for their sex.

  Shannon shot a wary look to Chloe. “Perhaps it would be best if we pretended our brewing venture no longer existed at all,” she said with a narrow-eyed look.

  “But women have been brewers for centuries,” Chloe protested as they rode up to The Hangman’s back door. “It was an exclusively female endeavor all through the Middle Ages. I read about it in a History book. The book didn’t even have pictures.”

  Marie laughed as she shifted her feet from her bicycle’s pedals to the ground and leaned forward over her handlebars. “Is it only books without pictures that have authority, then?” she asked.

  “I’d be surprised if you’ve read a book at all recently,” Colleen teased her with a lopsided grin. “I’m surprised you deigned to leave your dear, delicious husband for more than a few minutes to join us.”

  “Christian believes it is important for a woman to have her own interests and activities, even when she is married,” Marie said with a mock imperious look. She couldn’t hold the look, though, and dissolved into wicked giggles. “Besides, he’s a bit sore today.”

  Shannon rolled her eyes. Chloe blinked obliviously. Colleen knew enough to guess that Marie was talking about sexual relations, but it was beyond her why Lord Kilrea would be sore. From the gossip she’d heard, it was the lady who was far more likely to end up smarting as a result of the marriage bed.

  “I’m surprised that Lord Kilrea let you out of the house at all,” Colleen said, dismounting her bicycle with a groan. Fortunately, a young man from the pub joined Mr. Coney in unstrapping the barrels of beer and taking them into the pub so she didn’t have to exert herself further. “I’m surprise you’re able to have your own thoughts at all, seeing as you were so foolish as to fall into Fergus’s marriage trap.”

  “Yes, Marie,” Chloe added with a scolding click of her tongue. “That really was unwise of you.”

  “I believe our dear sister feels she’s made a good bargain in trading her freedom for other things,” Shannon said, sending Marie a downright wicked look.

  Marie met that look with a teasing flicker of one eyebrow. “There are benefits to finding oneself under a man.”

  Colleen was certain she was speaking in some sort of double entendre, but she ignored what she didn’t fully understand and shook her head. “You’ll never catch me tripping up to the point where Fergus arranges a marriage just to stop a scandal.”

  “You may find yourself agreeing to Fergus’s marital dealings for other reasons,” Marie warned her with a sly look.

  “Who, Colleen?” Chloe snorted. “Never.”

  “You ladies look as though you’ve been rode hard and put up wet,” Mr. Coney said once all four barrels had been taken from their bicycles into the pub. “I know it ain’t proper for the likes of you to patronize my pub, but if you’d care to come inside and sit a while, I’ll have Maeve make you some tea.”

  “A sampling of some of your weaker ale would be good enough for us,” Shannon said, looking more like a fishwife than the eldest sister of an earl as she wiped her hands on her skirt and followed Mr. Coney into the pub. “We need to talk about the price of this shipment anyhow.”

  Colleen was more than happy to leave the business dealings of their brewing enterprise to Shannon. Shannon was the one with the head for business anyhow. Colleen fancied herself the sister with the finest palate and routinely adjusted the recipe for their beer. She had no qualms at all—even though she knew she should—striding into the backroom of the pub and following Mr. Coney’s handsome young assistant as he directed her to a table near the door that led into the main part of the pub. She accepted a half-pint of ale and settled in to enjoy it, Marie and Chloe sitting at the small table beside her.

  That was when she heard two familiar voices speaking low on the other side of the doorway.

  “I need you to keep the dragon for me, Benedict.” The man speaking had to be their cousin, Cailean O’Shea, Viscount Dervock. Colleen would know his melodious voice anywhere.

  “Of course, I’ll keep it.” The reply came from Lord Benedict Boleran. Just the idea that Lord Boleran was in the next room, probably looking all smug and handsome—no, that wasn’t the word she wanted to describe him—smug and haughty, had Colleen’s temperature rising higher than it already was. She could feel her cheeks burning.

  “Lord Boleran,” Chloe whispered, then clapped a hand over her mouth and dissolved into giggles.

  “Oh, dear.” Marie rolled her eyes, her mouth tugging into a lopsided smile. She shook her head at Colleen.

  “What are those reactions for?” Colleen hissed. “You know I simply cannot abide Lord Boleran.”

  “Oh, yes. You simply cannot abide him.” Marie mocked her.

  Colleen made a sound of disgust, even as she pressed a hand to her stomach. The ale she’d been served was stronger than she’d thought it would be, that must be it. Because there was no one in Ireland or beyond whom she hated more than Lord Boleran. Every time she’d encountered him, the man was stiff, morose, insufferable, and gorgeous.

  No, that wasn’t the word she was searching for either. Lord Boleran condescended to her in the worst possible way. He’d barely tolerated her visit several weeks ago, after Lord Kilrea’s father and brother were killed in that unfortunate carriage accident, when Marie had implored her to ask Lord Boleran what he had observed about the wrecked carriage. He seemed to disapprove of her every time their paths crossed in town or at a ball. And yet, he always made it a point to torture her with an invitation to dance or a passing hello when she did not wish to speak to him.

  Colleen’s sisters continued to stare at her as if they knew something she didn’t. She shook her head and deliberately ignored them, leaning toward the doorway to listen in on Lord Boleran and Cousin Cailean’s conversation.

  “…too big to put anywhere else,” Cailean was saying. “And the poor thing requires such careful care and feeding, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  “Perfectly apt,” Lord Boleran sa
id.

  “And what with my recent land sale….” Cailean let out a sigh. Colleen didn’t need to hear him explain. They all knew that Cailean was strapped for cash and that he had resorted to selling off parts of his estate to pay his debtors. “The dragon will be better off in your care, for the time being,” Cailean went on. “I trust you to keep it safe.”

  “The dragon?” Chloe whispered.

  Colleen shrugged. She’d never heard of such a thing. At least, not outside of the world of fantasy.

  “Your dragon will be welcome on my land,” Lord Boleran said. “Provided it doesn’t breathe fire and burn my barn down.”

  The two men laughed. Colleen was more confused than ever. Cailean was known to be eccentric, but if Lord Boleran was intent on indulging his fantasies…well, that was simply cruel.

  “If you will excuse me for a moment,” Cailean said. Colleen heard the sound of him getting up and moving away from the table.

  Silence followed, which suggested Lord Boleran was seated at the table alone.

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Colleen whispered to her sisters.

  Before either of them could stop her, she got up, brushed her hair back from her face, squared her shoulders, and marched through the canvas curtain separating the back of the pub from the front.

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