The Christmas Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

violently as it had.
    “Grandmamma believes that consuming a raw potato soaked in good Irish whiskey will keep the sickness away, yet I cannot bear to eat such a thing. I have found a glass of warm ginger beer to do quite nicely.”
    Henry risked looking at his angel of mercy. She was pretty. A wisp of dark hair peeked out from beneath the hood of her cloak and fell artlessly across her brow. Her eyes, rimmed with thick lashes, seemed almost crystalline blue in the moonlight. And her plump lips, turned up in a soft smile of sympathy, were dark ruby in color. He meant to ask her name, but the ship surged upward, and Henry’s belly with it. He turned quickly to the bow and the horizon beyond, fighting down the nausea.
    “Keep your gaze on the sky, and we’ll be in Dublin before you realize it.”
    He prayed that she was right and fixed his gaze on one star that seemed brighter than all the others. When he looked back for the woman, she had gone, disappearing into the night. An angel, he thought as he focused on the horizon. An angel come down from the heavens to save him. He glanced down, to the linen handkerchief he’d crushed in his fist. Neatly embroidered on the scalloped edge were her initials, in the same blue as her eyes: E.O.

Chapter Two
     
    DUBLIN, IRELAND
     
    Eireanne O’Conner had been reared at Ballynaheath in County Galway. When she was a girl, a trip to Dublin was considered a treat, what with all its shops and the variety of goods, matched only by the variety of people milling about the streets. But now, having spent the last three months in Lucerne, Switzerland, she found it surprising that Dublin should seem so small and dirty.
    She supposed her instructors had opened her eyes in more ways than she’d realized. She’d been attending the prestigious Institut Villa de Amiels, where young ladies of considerable means from all around the world were sent for “schooling.” That was the polite way of indicating that young ladies were sent to be groomed for the most elite marriage marts in the world. Supposedly, when a young lady emerged from the Institut, she had not only acquired all the social skills necessary to move among the haut ton but she’d established the necessary connections as well. It therefore stood to reason, at least to the families who paid the dear price to send daughters, that offers of marriage would come flowing in.
    Eireanne would believe that was true when she was presented with an offer of marriage. Declan, the Earl of Donnelly—Eireanne’s brother and guardian—intended to dispatch her to London upon completing her studies for the sole purpose of finding a husband. That was the goal, the peach floating in the cream, Eireanne’s raison d’être . She was to take her schooling and find a titled husband tout de suite.
    It all sounded entirely too calculated, but quite honestly, Eireanne was at peace with the truth of her situation. She wanted to be married, to have children, to run her own house. And she still held out hope for love.
    Unfortunately, her opportunities for a love match were rather bleak in Ireland. In County Galway, gentlemen bachelors did not crop up like wildflowers in the parks as they seemed to do in Dublin and London, or even in Lucerne. Not that it mattered to her particular circumstance, for even if there had been squads of bachelors trooping about Ballynaheath, it was her suitability as a match that had kept Eireanne from gaining an offer. It was all quite simple, according to her friends, Molly and Mabe Hannigan, the younger twin sisters of Keira, the woman Declan had married in a wee bit of haste on the heels of yet another scandal . . . Declan, God love him, had been quite good in attracting scandal through the years.
    What Molly and Mabe meant was that because Eireanne had been raised by her brother the earl, and had lived under his influence, her reputation was tainted by his scandals. Gentlemen might have esteemed her, but their families