The Highwayman (Rakes and Rogues of the Restoration Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Saye, would sometimes tell her stories as she sat upon his knee, of the beauty of Ireland and his love for her mother, Brigid Claire—a woman as wild and soulful as Ireland herself. He’d lost his heart to her whilst serving on one of Cromwell’s Irish campaigns.
    Not all who followed Cromwell were religious fanatics. Some, like her father, were levelers and free-thinkers. Basing their opinions on scientific inquiry and logic rather than authority and tradition, they held a general belief in equality for all. It was a popular movement among many in the New Model Army, including some who argued that Irish Catholics had a claim to freedom and equality just as valid as their own.
    It didn’t matter to her father that Brigid Claire was Catholic. As a second son, he’d not expected to inherit and he’d married her with every intention of making Ireland his home. But when significant elements of the army refused to embark for Ireland and Cromwell decided they had to be crushed—he had wisely decided to retire his commission, claim his inheritance, and spirit his wife away to the relative safety of his quiet English home. She died while Arabella was just a toddler, but her father’s tales brought her vividly to life, and as Arabella grew older, she wrote them down in a leather-bound journal that she carried with her everywhere she went.
    ‘She was a bold lass, Arabella,’ her father told her, ‘and a proud one too. Proud of her people, proud of her heritage, but not so proud of anything as she was of you. We’ll go there one day, to claim the lands she set aside for you. And a grand adventure it will be, too.’
    But the adventure had never happened. It was Brigid Claire that had charmed her father, not Ireland itself, and with her death and the brutal suppression of the ideals that inspired him, he had slowly begun to fade, first his spirit and then his health. As he retreated from the world, many of his duties had passed on to her. She carried his keys, became his representative with the servants and the tradespeople, and by the time she was fifteen she was mistress of the house.
    On her sixteenth birthday, he gave her a carved wooden box brimming with letters. A gift from a mother to daughter nearly grown. They contained magical tales, proud stories of her heritage, and lyrical descriptions of the land she had loved. Every page was filled with love and pride for her daughter, and with her own stories too. Stories of mischief, exploration, daring and adventure, and of course, a story of falling in love. Reading them stirred longings deep within her, for a life beyond the confines of the one she knew. Through those letters, she had come to know her mother, and to feel a kinship for a place she’d never been.
    She had wanted to visit for as long as she could remember and now had seemed the time. She had never considered that Robert might know to follow her. But he must have suspected she was up to something. He had known enough about her comings and goings to arrange to have her intercepted, and to arrange to have her brought to him.
    Arabella stopped walking and leaned tiredly against the wall, resting just a moment, wincing at the sharp sting as her back touched rough stone. Her instincts about her cousin had proven correct, though she’d never expected he might go to such extremes. She was no longer sure he was sane. After tonight, she suspected he might kill her out of spite if his plans didn’t succeed.
    But she had inherited her father’s commonsense and steady nerves as well as her mother’s independent spirit, and she’d had the foresight to write her own will. If she should meet an untimely end, Robert would be sorely disappointed. It was the widows and orphans of her parish who would benefit, and not her greedy cousin. Surely, he must know that if he’d known of her plans to leave. He needed her alive and he needed her to marry him in order to take what he wanted, and that she would not do.
    But now he