The Irish Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

that you hired
Kirwan’s sister, and that she was seen running from here yesterday
with her dress half-torn off after escaping your attentions.
Really, Noel, what a clumsy lack of finesse you exhibited. And for
all I know, the sister might have been complicit with your rent
agent. Have you checked to see if anything is missing? The silver?
Valuable artifacts?”
    Noel felt his father’s withering
disapproval now more than ever before. Worse, he realized that his
father knew even more than he’d suspected.
    “ And now Kirwan is dead,
killed in a fight by that firebrand, Aidan O’Rourke—”
    “ What? Kirwan is dead?”
Noel’s dignity slipped again and he felt his jaw drop.
    His father looked pleased
with the effect of this news. “Well, perhaps that’s one report you
didn’t receive. He went to the O’Rourkes’ yesterday to evict them
and knock down their cottage. He scuffled with Aidan and
they say he hit
his head on a rock. He died instantly. One of Kirwan’s henchmen
blabbered the story around town. The authorities are searching
O’Rourke as we speak.”
    Noel jumped on this news, hoping to
use it to reflect the glare of the problem away from himself. “But
that’s good! The worthless, murdering guttersnipe.”
    “ Except that I don’t believe
they’ll find him. One of my men says he’s been spotted on the road
heading to Queenstown.”
    “ Then surely the authorities
will track him down as well. We’ve only to wait for them to bring
him back.”
    Lord Cardwell leaned forward over his
desk blotter. “You began this task, Noel. I expect you to finish
it.”
    “ Me! And just how am I to
‘finish it?’ ”
    “ You will bring back
O’Rourke yourself.”
    God, but this was too much. “Surely
you can’t expect me to ride about the countryside like a constable,
searching through shrubbery and under rocks! If you don’t believe
the authorities will find him, why do you think I will?”
    “ Because until you return
with the man who cheated me out of the satisfaction of seeing
Michael Kirwan clapped in irons, your debts will go unpaid. And
quite a stack you have, too.” He reached into a side drawer of his
desk and produced a sheaf of bills. Leafing through them, he
recited, “Tailor, haberdasher, bootmaker, wine merchant—I will tell
all of them to find you for payment. It should be interesting, don’t you
think? The hounds chasing the hunter?”
    Noel felt the blood drain from his
face. “You wouldn’t do that.”
    His father’s shoulders drooped
slightly. “I’ve been waiting for you to grow up for years, Noel. I
was twenty-three, two years younger than you, when I took over this
estate. Your grandfather was deranged and nearly bankrupt when he
died and had let this place go to ruin while he followed the same
useless pursuits that you do—gaming, women, drinking, and
indolence. I’ve worked hard to bring it back to its present state.”
His cold, glittering eyes fixed on Noel’s. “But I swear to you,
before I die I’ll burn the manor house to the ground and evict
every tenant on the land if I think you’ll wreck it again. If you
mean to inherit anything from me in the future, you’ll do as I say
now.”
    Noel drained his brandy glass, barely
restraining the urge to take a bite from the crystal. What a
galling situation he found himself in.
    His lordship nodded, obviously
accepting Noel’s silence for acquiescence. “They say O’Rourke is
traveling with a red-haired woman. That might slow him down.” Noel
started. It could be any woman, he told himself. Certainly Ireland
had no shortage of redheaded people and O’Rourke’s reputation with
women was no secret in any quarter. But his father’s next words
removed all doubt. “The same man who saw O’Rourke believed the
woman is Kirwan’s sister. So you can bring her back as
well.”
    Kirwan’s sister. Why on earth would
she be traveling with Aidan when she was supposed to marry his
brother? Under any other circumstances,