Patrica Rice Read online

Not until he had the “lad” in the lighted rooms of an inn did Michael discover the extent of the surprise concealed in this filthy package. Except for his companion’s petite height and poorly disguised feminine curves, the image staring back at him could be his own sister.

  Concealing his disbelief, O’Toole took a seat beside the roaring fire and gestured for the “lad” to do the same. “I think you’d best be telling me your real name,” he suggested, trying to hide his curiosity from himself as well as his terrified companion.

  He’d known people with red hair and green eyes before. The world abounded with them. Quite a few even shared his lean build. He’d never met any with all three features plus his striking lack of freckles. And while her chin was considerably narrower than his own, and her high forehead and marked cheekbones proportionately smaller, he would think her a younger version of himself were she not so obviously female.

  “Mac” scowled and held the cup of heated cider between her hands to warm them. “Mac is all they call me,” she replied sullenly. “’Tis none of your consarn.”

  O’Toole debated calling her bluff, but he’d seen enough frightened youngsters to recognize one prepared to bolt. If she felt safer disguised as a boy, then so be it, for now.

  He’d never known a home or had any particular desire for one, but he’d always wondered about his origins. Having no name of his own had its advantages, but his intellect couldn’t abide ignorance. Gavin might claim him as brother, but that claim came from the circumstances they’d grown up in and not reality.

  “P’raps it’s none of my consarn,” he replied with disinterest as he gnawed on a chicken leg, “but ’tis of some interest when you’re after appearin’ more like my brother than me own brother does.”

  She didn’t look his way, so she’d noticed the resemblance also. He was inclined to believe what he wanted to believe, but he wasn’t imagining the likeness.

  “My family has produced bastards enough,” she replied dryly. “Royalty is not alone in that habit.”

  He chuckled in appreciation of the observation. A young girl should have no such notions in her head, but he couldn’t fault her acuity. “Well, and I’m flattered of your opinion of me and mine. Since we’re neither of us from these parts, might I inquire as to your destination?”

  He saw her shoulders tense beneath the thin wool coat. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew travel in groups was safer than alone. He pushed the remaining chicken carcass in her direction and watched her eye it hungrily. One needed coins to travel safely. She would know that, too.

  “To London,” she replied, helping herself to the other leg. “To my aunt,” she added with a shade of defiance, daring him to doubt her reply.

  O’Toole brightened as if pleased with this discovery. “I have business in the city myself. We might help each other, after all. I just lost my assistant, you see.”

  He lied. More like, he fudged the truth considerably. He had no direction, no business, and no assistant, unless one counted the last stray he’d found a home. But he could easily manufacture all three with a sweep of his hat. He had twenty-eight years of experience in surviving in this world. He could be anything anyone wanted him to be.

  She shot him a look of distrust. “And what might your business be? Horse trader?”

  He grinned at her insult. “I’m an actor, lad, on my way to a new position in Drury Lane. But we’re a long way from the city’s glittering lights, and travel is expensive. I’ll earn my way there. ’Tis an honest enough profession. I’ve paid for a bed in the common room. Why don’t you take that fowl up and get some sleep? I’ve an eye on the serving lass over there for the evening.”

  She accepted that well enough. O’Toole watched as she gathered up the remains of the chicken and the bread rump. She looked too worn and weary for protest. If he treated her like a boy, she might linger. He would take precautions against her bolting at the first light of day. She didn’t have a chance in hell on the road alone.

  After she left, O’Toole stayed in his chair, sipping at his coffee and staring at the flames. In his experience, wealth created more evil than good. He had no desire to accumulate any. His goal in life had always been to see what there was to see, do what there was to do, and help the less fortunate along the way.

  A family would inevitably ruin that footloose life.

  He’d stumbled upon a crossroads he’d never expected to reach: should he continue down the direct path, delivering the lass to her aunt without further question, or should he explore the side road of that frightening resemblance and possibly uncover the family he’d never known?

  The question was rhetorical. He’d never ignored an unexplored road in his life.

  * * *

  “This isn’t the way to London,” Mac announced as the hay wagon bounced in a rut.

  After sitting in the farmer’s barn all winter, the hay was redolent of rot, but Michael wouldn’t complain of the odor or the ride. A hole in his companion’s boot had broken through to match the one in her stocking.

  “I have a stop to make first. We can’t go into London looking like beggars.” He’d thought long and hard on this as they’d traversed the roads from the lake country to Hampshire. Despite the similarities in their appearances, the chit couldn’t possibly be his sister. They’d been born an ocean apart. Still, he couldn’t ignore the possibility of a blood relation, or the instinct that told him she verged on desperation.

  Days in her company hadn’t imparted the information he wanted. He needed help. The melodic voice of a certain angelic female beckoned. If anyone could winkle information out of the chit, Lady Blanche could.

  “What shall we go to London looking like?" Mac inquired idly, her brogue disappearing. He’d noticed that tendency as she grew more comfortable in his presence.

  “That depends on what you mean to do when you get there, my lady,” Michael replied, waiting for her reaction.

  He watched her panic at his challenge, but she didn’t speak her fear.

  “I shall go to my aunt, just as I said,” she answered without looking at him, not attempting to deny her disguise.

  “You must have a very understanding aunt, Miss Mac,” he said dryly. “A young lady traveling the length of England and breadth of Ireland, unaccompanied, and in boy’s rags, would bring the stoutest of matrons of my acquaintance to their knees in horror.”

  “Whimpering Sassenach milksops,” she returned sulkily. “I’ll be getting off here, then, and making my own way, thank ye.”

  She tried to leap from the rolling wagon, but O’Toole caught her elbow. She struggled, but he dragged her farther into the cart with ease.

  “I’ll take you to the house of a lady friend of mine. She’ll see that you’re suitably attired. Then we’ll discuss appropriate traveling arrangements. It would be best if I could give her a proper name.”

  O’Toole watched her war of emotions. To his dismay, he recognized real fear, along with indecision and determination. What could a mere child know of fear so great that she must run across two countries to escape it?

  “Polly,” she replied blithely, not looking at him again.

  “Polly,” he repeated with distaste. “I knew a sailor once who named his parrot that. It does not suit you. Wouldn’t you rather choose something more interesting?”

  The girl looked as if she might hit him. Eyeing him, she thought better of it. “Fiona,” she tried carefully. “Fiona MacOwen.”

  “Fey-onah?” he pronounced with the proper Irish accent. “A foyne old Irish name,” he agreed with a grin. “I like it, though I think you ought to be a foot taller and much more mysterious to wear it. A red-headed cherub is more like a Molly than a Fiona.”

  She did hit him then, smacking his arm out from under him so he tumbled over backward into the smelly hay. O’Toole emerged laughing, his tall hat lost in the stack, and wisps of straw stuck in his hair.

  “I’m that destroyed, I am!” he cried cheerfully, patting through the hay for his hat. “Taken
down by a mere female. And a beggarly one at that. I’ll never live down the shame.”

  Fiona smiled, and appearing less prepared to bolt, she sat with him as they let the fine sun seep into their bones.

  The farm wagon turned from the main highway onto a private road, and Michael watched as his companion observed the rolling lawn with interest. Well-fed cattle roamed amid thick-wooled sheep ready for shearing. Stately oaks lined the gravel-paved drive. Her eyes widened when she saw the huge ridged mound the English ridiculously called a ha-ha separating the cattle from the main lawn, and she glanced over her shoulder at the “farm house” they approached.

  It sprawled across the horizon, towering four stories high and sporting turrets, minarets, and a huge dome over the main block of the mansion.

  She glanced at the flagpole above the entrance and sighed with relief, indicating she knew the lack of flag meant that the lord wasn’t home.

  Then she turned and socked O’Toole firmly in his middle with all the strength she possessed.

  Three

  Rubbing his midriff and grinning, Michael slipped down Anglesey’s interior marble staircase. He hadn’t expected interference from the servants when he’d brought the brat in the back way and ordered them to outfit her appropriately. He made it a point to know the servants in any place he visited, and Lady Blanche’s servants in particular. They looked after her like the parents she didn’t have, and they understood that Michael had the lady’s best interests at heart. Of course, they didn’t understand Fiona’s presence, but that wasn’t his immediate concern.

  His immediate concern was the Lady Blanche herself. He was a trifle nervous about facing her after all this time. But if anyone could help him pry information out of his obstinate stray, Blanche could. They’d shared mischief in the past. He hoped she would enjoy a little adventure.

  From the direction of the estate office drifted the lilting voice Michael remembered with such pleasure. “No, Beamis, I will not sell the Wilmington acreage. Did you not hear me clearly the first time?”

  Michael frowned. He’d never heard the lady’s voice raised in anger before. He distinctly remembered her as mild-mannered and ever courteous.

  “But Lady Blanche, it is naught but rock and wood and of no use to anyone at all but poachers, His Grace said.”

  “You may remind the duke that the acreage is mine to do with as I wish, and I do not wish to sell it.”

  Michael hesitated, not wanting to interfere in a business discussion, but all his protective instincts clamored for him to halt the harassment of a lady in the name of her noble cousin. The intrusion of a third voice caused him further pause.

  “My lady, we could use the proceeds from the sale for expanding the mine in Cornwall, as we discussed earlier. Your grandfather would have.”

  “I am not my grandfather, Barnaby! I have reason to keep the acreage and reason for not expanding the mine, and no need for explaining either. If you can do nothing better than badger me with the wishes of yourselves or my cousin or my grandfather with no care to what I want, than I shall be better off without the lot of you!”

  Astonished, Michael presented himself at the office door. Two obviously harassed men, one in country tweed and the other in tradesman’s drab, stood hats in hands before a wide desk. Behind the desk sat the dainty woman Michael remembered well.

  Wisps of sunny hair drifted from her coiffeur, framing sky blue eyes. But the rounded cheeks he’d once admired had reddened into drawn, angry patches, and the blue eyes appeared a glacial gray as she glared at her steward and man of business. Rose lips formed a humorless line above a small chin tilted in defiance. Michael advanced into the room. “Why don’t you just kick them in the balls and get it over with, my dear lady?” he asked with good cheer. “Men deal with physical pain much more stoically.”

  * * *

  The startling appearance of her knight in tarnished armor dashed all thought of business out of Blanche’s head. Michael! After almost two years, the wretched O’Toole dared to sweep back into her life as if he’d left only yesterday. She stifled an urge to dive over the desk and scratch his laughing eyes out.

  He was more devastatingly handsome than she remembered. The years had sculpted his features into sharp cheekbones and lean jaw. Only the absurdity of his gloriously auburn hair and the laughing crinkle of his eyes softened his harsh features. She cast a quick glance at the breadth of strong shoulders she remembered too well, then forced herself to look away.

  His ribald remark had left her men of business gaping with horror, but Blanche rose to his provocation. “Shall I take a pistol ball to your hide and discover the truth of that, O’Toole?”

  Undeterred, Michael swept around the desk, produced a nosegay from his pocket, and flourished it before kissing the scar along her hairline. “Pistols at dawn, if you require, but I’d much rather take one to Neville than your dainty self.”

  He gestured toward their audience. “Wouldn’t it be much simpler to just tell the gentlemen that you prefer feeding the poachers than letting your neighbors set traps for them? And I suppose the working conditions in the mine have deteriorated again to the point that you must visit the foreman and cut off his head before you give him one more ha’penny?”

  “O’Toole, will you get away from me with your blarney and take these blasted flowers and shove them back in my garden where they belong?” Refusing to fall for Michael’s charms as she so stupidly had once before, Blanche glared at their gaping audience. “You’re both dismissed, and you may take this layabout with you when you go.”

  With that, she rose from her chair and glided toward the escape of her private apartments behind the public office.

  Before the two burly men could manhandle him out the door, Michael called after her. “If I leave, you’ll have to look after Fiona. I’m afraid she’s a bit of a handful, but she’s too far from home to return now!”

  Blanche halted with her hand on the door to freedom. “Fiona? One of your strays, I presume?” she asked tartly.

  He grinned. “Of course.”

  Unconsciously, she raised fingers to a brow knitted with the pain of this day and too many others like it. “Leave him, Beamis. I may as well deal with one more nodcock before this day’s over.”

  Intelligently, the beefy steward dropped Michael’s arm.

  Michael waited until the two men closed the door behind them before speaking. “We meet again, my lady.”

  “It’s been what? Two years?” she asked wearily. “And you just pop in and act as if it were yesterday. Who the devil is Fiona and what am I supposed to do with her?”

  Michael rolled his shoulders beneath the ill-fitting frock coat. He knew he wasn’t a careless person. He’d looked after the duke’s wealthy granddaughter at a time when he’d thought she needed it, as Fiona did now. Of course, unlike his usual strays and orphans, Lady Blanche had any number of people who could have looked after her, but she’d been vulnerable after the fire that had almost taken her life. She couldn’t trust anyone else back then, but she’d trusted him. And then, when she hadn’t needed him anymore, he’d moved on.

  He hadn’t forgotten her, but he’d rather thought a titled lady would have forgotten him. But oddly enough, she seemed to be accusing him of neglect.

  “I’m not entirely certain what Fiona is quite yet. I thought you might help me,” he answered honestly, having no other reply.

  “As if I have nothing else better to do,” Blanche answered with bitterness. “Why bring her here? Surely you have any number of other women to whom you could take her.”

  For the first time in memory, Michael’s instincts failed him. She possessed every treasure known to mankind: beauty, wealth, intelligence, the sunniest nature he’d ever been blessed to know. What had happened in the two years since he’d seen her last?

  “I could take her to Gavin and Dillian, I suppose, but they’re so wrapped up in the new addition to the family and the renovation of their mansion that I didn’t like disturbing
them. I thought you might enjoy a bit of adventure,” he admitted. ”If not, then I’ll take her into London myself. She’s a bit nervous about traveling with a strange man, so I’ve pretended to believe she’s a boy until we arrived. She’s utterly terrified of something, and I’m afraid she’ll bolt now I’ve exposed her disguise.”

  “Tell me, O’Toole, do you make it a practice of rescuing every helpless female who crosses your path?”

  “I thought you rather enjoyed learning to play hide-and-seek with me in Gavin’s ridiculous fortress after the fire. Admittedly, you were never as terrified of your arsonists as you should have been, but you should appreciate the need to help those in trouble. And to answer your question, no, I don’t limit my practices exclusively to females,” he answered with pretended insouciance.

  “Not exclusively females,” she murmured, taking in his tattered state of dress.

  Michael resisted shifting from one foot to the other beneath her contemptuous glare. He didn’t remember her minding his carelessness before. He should have found a starched cravat and a more respectable coat. He knew where Neville kept his wardrobe.

  “Do I have a choice?” she asked. “If I remember correctly, you go where you want and do as you please.”

  He leaned his hip against the sill, crossed his arms, and offered a bland smile. “I think you are in need of a little reprieve from your duties, my lady. A court jester is just the solution. Why don’t you call for a nice cup of tea, and I’ll bring Fiona to you?” He watched her waver.

  “I’ll be in the gold sitting room. Bring her there. And see if one of Neville’s coats won’t fit you better. If they see you looking like that, the maids will think you a chimney sweep.”

  She swept out, apparently meaning to leave him feeling even smaller than before. Instead, Michael rubbed his jaw. Gavin hadn’t mentioned anything amiss with his wife’s lovely cousin, but then Gavin wasn’t inclined to notice anything but his fields. Well, he had nothing better to do than dig to the bottom of the mystery while resolving Fiona’s problems.