Sarah M. Eden British Isles Collection (A Timeless Romance Anthology Book 15)

by Sarah M. Eden

  She packed her small satchel and pulled on her heavy woolen coat. ’Twas a cold Christmas morning, perfect for staying tucked in bed, curled up under the blankets. But ’twas also a Sunday, and Alice had no choice but to step out into the weather and make her trek back to the farm where she worked.

  The hour was early, an approach she’d adopted weeks earlier after her falling-out with Isaac. Avoiding him was easier, kinder, on her too-tender heart. That morning there’d be no Billy to see her off. He’d been nearly in tears by the time she’d delivered him home. His da had thought it best to not wake him that morning, and not to find him work at the Kilchrests’ again.

  Alice slipped her satchel over her shoulder. She wound a thick scarf about her neck and tied her battered bonnet tight on her head. She couldn’t hide in the warmth of her grandparents’ house forever.

  The air hung heavy and cold as she stepped out on to the streets of Cavan. A cold and lonely Christmas Day, indeed. If only men weren’t so infernally blind and stubborn, she might have been spending her Christmas morning with Isaac at her side rather than missing him as she was.

  Perhaps men weren’t the only ones who clung to foolish notions.

  ’Twas something of a shame to mar the fresh, untouched layer of snow with her trudging footsteps. So few things in life worked out neat and tidy.

  She passed the church where Isaac would be attending services.

  And if I must be passed over for something, I suppose church on a Christmas morning isn’t so bad a thing.

  Alice turned her face into the light wind and continued on her way. The miles back toward Killeshandra would not be pleasant; that was quite sure and certain. Some other poor traveler was but a few streets ahead of her, braving the same elements.

  She held her coat closer to her with her gloved hands. Perhaps if she thought hard on the blankets and the warm fire in the kitchen hearth in the farmhouse that waited at the end of that long road, she’d not feel the chill quite so deep and acute. If nothing else, the anticipation quickened her steps.

  She quickly came even with her fellow traveler. He, apparently, hadn’t sufficient imagination to push him onward.

  Alice set her mind to offering him an encouraging smile and a Christmas greeting as she passed. A person ought to receive at least that when alone on a morning such as this one. No sooner had she reached the stranger’s side than he spoke.

  “Have ya a friend to walk around Lough Oughter with ya?”

  Her gaze immediately jumped to his face. “Isaac?”

  He didn’t look at her but kept his eyes trained ahead. “Might I make the journey back with ya?”

  She didn’t answer right off, but continued walking in confused silence. She’d not at all expected to see him on the road.

  “Why is it ye’re not in church this morning? I’ve never known ya to miss services. And on Christmas Day of all days.” ’Twas more shocking the longer she thought on it.

  He finally looked at her, but his expression was one of apprehension. “I didn’t know when ye’d be passing by, and I didn’t dare risk missing ya. I’ve been out here some time already.”

  “Out here? In this weather?” Heavens, the man must have been near frozen.

  Alice opened her satchel as they continued walking, digging through her meager belongings until she found the woolen scarf her cousin had knitted her. She’d kept it tucked away should she need more bundling during the walk home. But one look at Isaac’s red nose and bare neck made up her mind on that score.

  He was still clearly unsure of himself. Did he think she disliked him? That she didn’t want him about? He’d been thick-headed and stubborn, but love doesn’t fly away for such reasons as that.

  “Come, then,” she instructed, stopping and motioning him closer.

  She began wrapping the scarf about his neck.

  “I can’t take yer scarf, Alice. Suppose ya need it yer own self?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve a warm one on already. Now ya just take this, and don’t make a great fuss over it.”

  He held quite still as she finished wrapping and tying. Alice’s heart pounded clear into her fingertips. Except for the occasional moment when he helped her over a muddy bit of road or bumped against her on accident, they’d never really touched. Yet wrapping her scarf about his neck, her hands brushed against him. She felt the tiny moment of contact clear to her very soul. She gazed up to find his eyes locked with her own.

  They stood there at the very edge of Cavan Town directly on the road leading away, simply looking at one another. Each breath they took fogged the air between them.

  “I’ve been a fool, Alice,” Isaac whispered.

  “Have ya now?” Her voice emerged even quieter than his.

  His hand lightly touched her cheek, just inside the brim of her bonnet. Such a look of sad regret weighed down his handsome face. “I’m too stubborn by half, ya know. And when my mind’s set to something I don’t always heed the world about me. I miss a great many important things that way.”

  For the first time in some weeks, Alice’s heart smiled along with her lips. “Ya are terrible stubborn, Isaac Dancy.”

  His eyes traced her smiling face, and some of the heaviness left his expression. His hand slid from her face to her shoulder, down to her arm and took hold of her hand. “I hope, Alice, ye’re every bit as forgiving as I am dimwitted.”

  “I’m a woman.” She shrugged. “We’ve had to be forgiving since time began.”

  “Speaking of which...” He set something in her free hand.

  What in heaven’s name? She examined the little cloth-wrapped bundle. “What is it?”

  “’Tis a present, it is. A Christmas gift.”

  “For me?” She’d not been expecting that.

  “It’s certainly not for Miss Kilchrest.”

  Alice shot him a look of warning at that. If the man truly wanted to get back in her good graces, he’d do well to leave a certain woman’s name out of things.

  Isaac looked immediately contrite, but with a hint of amusement in his eyes. Here was the banter she’d missed between them. Here was his silent, lighthearted laughter. She’d needed it these past weeks.

  She untied the fabric and unwound the gift. After unlooping the fabric for a moment, she reached the center. ’Twas the most beautiful bit of jewelry she’d ever seen. Clearly it was a pin, but with a peg on the side. Alice pushed the peg in, and the round, blue and gold case opened.

  “A watch.” She’d always wanted a timepiece of her own, but never had she imagined one so beautiful.

  “Ya need one, ya know,” Isaac said. “Always pestering me to know the hour.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “A man can only take so much aggravation.”

  “I don’t know how to read it,” she warned him.

  His smile was kind and tender. “We’ve a long walk ahead of us. I’d be happy to show ya how.”

  Alice ran her finger over the delicate flowers on the deep blue watch case, inlaid with gold.

  Beautiful.

  “This must have come very dear.” She knew he was not a wealthy man. He was not destitute, but he hardly had endless coffers at his disposal.

  “It matches yer eyes, Alice. Matches quite perfectly. I couldn’t pass it by.”

  Matches yer eyes. That he even knew the color of her eyes came as both a surprise and a comfort. Perhaps she’d not been so overlooked all those months. “Ya had to have purchased this before the party last night.” Before Miss Kilchrest made her nature quite clear.

  Isaac nodded. “I decided on a lot of things before last night, though the evening firmed up my resolve on most of them.”

  How she hoped one of those decisions was to toss aside Miss Kilchrest in favor of her.

  She pinned the watch to the front of her coat, careful to clasp it securely. “Will it do, do ya think?”

  “Lovely.” But he wasn’t looking at the watch. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”

  “Blinded by a
mbition, ya were.”

  He nodded solemnly. “And by my own stupidity.”

  “Aye. That, as well.” She set a hand on his chest for balance as she stretched on her toes and placed a single, brief kiss on his cheek. “I thank ya for the fine Christmas present. I’ll cherish it always.”

  “Will ya let me cherish you, Alice?” One of his arms wrapped around her, keeping her nearby. “Will ya at least let me prove to ya that I can, that I will? All these months, I’ve grown to care more for ya than any person I know. I tell ya my thoughts and worries. I trust ya with my concerns. I miss ya when ye’re away and worry over ya when ye’re not close by. All these months, and I never realized—”

  “Ya talk too much, Isaac Dancy.” She took hold of the scarf about his neck and pulled him within an inch of herself. “It’s not words I’m needing just now.”

  His smile tipped a bit roguishly. “I’m most happy to oblige.”

  And he was. And did. His lips met hers in a caress so gentle at first, she hardly knew he’d begun kissing her. But his efforts quickly grew more urgent. Alice slid her arms around his neck and held fast to him.

  Here was the affection she’d longed for from him, the reassurance that he cared for her just as she cared for him. ’Twas home.

  Flakes of snow drifted softly and slowly down around them as they sealed quite a few unspoken promises with a fine bit of kissing on a peaceful Christmas morning on the road to Cavan Town.

  My mother named me Thomas, but everyone calls me Old Tom.

  “Make us laugh, Old Tom,” the other children often said as we’d lean against the gasworks wall, resting our legs from our childhood sport.

  “What of the lad who chased after the banshee?” I’ve often been asked.

  Or, “Tell us a tale of the wee folk.”

  The requests never changed, never stopped, even as I grew into the name they’d fashioned for me.

  “His eyes are old,” ’twas always said of me. “Old eyes speak of an old soul.” Then they would ask me to tell them a story. And I did. Every time. Tellers of tales are not born in Ireland; we are made.

  “I’ve a mind to hear something sad,” said the man dispensing pints in the pub, dangling before me the promise of something for wetting my thirst if only I’d weave a tale.

  And I obliged him, as is the custom in these parts. Kilkenny is an aged city, its people more ancient still. We tuck our souls into the spaces between the words of the stories we tell, feeling them safely hidden away there. We care not that a story be true, only that it be well told.

  This one, though, is true and real. ’Twas not in my time, nor in yours, but it was in someone’s time just the same…

  Chapter One

  Ireland, Late 1820s

  Not all roots take hold in County Mayo. For that reason, a certain Sean Kirkpatrick, his feet unsuited for firmly planting in the western lands, set those feet eastward on the promise of a position as a stable hand at Kilkenny Castle. He’d been challenged to prove his worth by driving a team of high-spirited nags from Dublin to Kilkenny in a given amount of time with not a scratch nor hair missing on either of the beasts. Arriving in one piece himself was not a requirement.

  Sean had in his possession a map of questionable authenticity but no other thing to aid him in finding his destination. He might as well have tossed a length of yarn on the seat beside him and obeyed its twists and turns for all the good the map was doing. He felt certain he’d passed the same outcropping of rocks a half-dozen times, and the trees seemed to be mocking him at every turn.

  “A fine lot you are,” he muttered at them. “Couldn’t give me so much as a hint, could you, say a branch pointing me in the right direction?”

  Winter had arrived weeks earlier, though the branches were not yet bare. Somehow their refusal to act as divining rods made their half-emptied state all the more dispiriting. If he had to be lost in the vast circular mess that was the road to Kilkenny, he felt Mother Ireland ought to at least have given him a bit of color to enjoy.

  Those were days of poverty, they were. Want and desperation had led many a man to do far worse than speak harshly to trees. And, though it would seem otherwise at first glance, Sean was not, in fact, mad. Lost, yes. Frustrated, decidedly. But he’d not entirely lost his mind.

  Rain had fallen cold and steady all that morning, and, it now being quite firmly the afternoon, the effects of a wet morning were felt everywhere: the dripping trees, the muddy road, the wet state of Sean’s backside. He was none too happy to have not yet reached Kilkenny as he ought to have. How easily he’d pictured himself arriving at the stables a day ahead, horses in fine feathers, himself not looking the least shabby. But rain and roads had conspired against him.

  Don’t you go about thinking that the Irish are a superstitious people. We are, of course, but I’d rather you didn’t think it. Still, honesty compels me to admit that Sean Kirkpatrick, upon passing the same collection of very large rocks for the seventh time in a single day, felt he’d best turn off the road and follow the rocks, seven being a lucky number and he being Irish and, therefore, not one to take chances with luck. Call that superstitious if you will. We prefer cautious.

  The path he guided his cart along led past one field after another, each divided from the next by low walls made of stone. Buildings dotted the landscape now and then, rough stone structures no doubt housing hay or animals. He thought he even saw, a great distance off, a thatched-roof cottage with a river-rock chimney and yet another rock-made wall. Ireland rather specializes in rocks.

  Sean continued on for a full Irish mile, a distance far shorter than an actual mile but long enough for calling it a mile when sharing the story later and wishing to make things sound more desperate than they truly were. He saw no people, no animals even. He’d stumbled upon a great deal of nothing— another Irish specialty— but he’d not yet found the road to Kilkenny.

  He came upon a hay barn filled nearly to the rafters, a rare enough sight during a time when the only thing most families had up to the rafters were children. Sean slowed his horses as he passed, watching for signs of life inside. There were none.

  ’Twas little point continuing down a path that could only end in muddy disappointment. He turned off and drove a bit past the hay barn, meaning to turn his cart around when he could find a bit of space to do it.

  He urged the horses to the left and leaned himself a bit as well in anticipation of the turn of his vehicle. Anticipation, however, does not always prove reality. The horses moved, but the cart did not.

  The horses made valiant efforts to move along, tugging and pulling and glancing back at him as if in blame. The cart was utterly stuck.

  Now, most men, no matter how stubborn and hardheaded, recognize the futility of continuing when a pursuit has proven impossible. But the promise of wages when one has none can override sense with the greatest of ease. Sean, operating under this particular flavor of desperation, hopped from his perch and strode, as much as one can stride through thick mud, to the horses’ heads.

  He eyed the pair of them with as fearsome a look as ever his mother had produced when he’d caused mischief as a lad. He knew the look well. “Are you not eager to reach your new home, then? You’d rather play about in the mud than keep on?”

  Sean swore that the beasts rolled their eyes at his scolding as if to point out that he, and not they, had been the one harebrained enough to drive into a muddy field in the first place.

  “Well, you might’ve warned me, you might.” He pulled off his sodden hat and slapped it against his thigh, sending droplets of water in all directions, punctuated by the very Irish disposition for colorful and detailed cursing.

  He pointed a warning finger at the horses in turn. “Don’t you go letting anyone steal you away, now. I’ve a job waiting, and it depends on you two bein’ here when I return. Do a lad a favor and don’t go wandering about with any strangers.”

  A nicker was all he received in response. That’d have to do, he supposed.


  He trudged back along the short path he’d taken past the tall hay barn, knowing that doing so would put him back on the road he’d been on before, the one that led through the fields and past the distant buildings. If he could make his way to the cottage, someone there might lend him a hand, and, in doing so, save his neck.

  Admitting he’d clearly taken a wrong turn in his attempt to find Kilkenny, that he’d been unable to find it at all, would be embarrassing, to say the least. Adding to that the confession that he’d managed to get his cart stuck in the mud, and it was enough to make him consider simply turning around and walking back to Mayo.

  As he walked around the barn, a bark so loud and deep that it echoed through him in stomach-turning vibrations destroyed what little peace he still felt. He knew of only one dog with such an enormous voice: the Irish wolfhound, a breed so large, not another dog in all of creation stood as tall or as menacing. And he, apparently, was about to encounter one.

  Sean searched his brains, trying to remember who was the patron saint of “not being devoured by a man-eating dog.” A second bark rumbled through the air, overlapped by another and then another.

  Three dogs. They bounded around the corner and directly at him, a hungry gleam in their ferocious eyes.

  And that is what comes of traveling in Ireland without a reliable map.

  Chapter Two

  Here in the Emerald Isle, we’ve a great many terms for a woman so beautiful that the entire island sits up and takes notice every time she leaves her house: Irish Rose. The Gem of Ireland’s Crown. If a man is wise: my wife. But we lag far behind in universal terms for women who are quite pretty but who don’t stop the earth’s rotation simply by arriving somewhere. Were there such a term, Maeve Butler could have adopted it as another given name.