The Irish Bride Read Online Free PDF

traveling with the Gentlemen so that you know their complaints?”
    “No. I’m not hard up enough as yet to take to the High Road.”
    “I am.” He hadn’t meant to admit it, but the sight of David Mochrie seemed to take him back to a day when they had no secrets from one another, nor would ever have thought of keeping one if they had.
    “Came out of the war poorer than when you went in, did you? I heard Napoleon was paying a bounty for every Irishman who’d join his Grand Armee. I know a few lads who took him up on his offer.” He lay his finger alongside his nose and winked.
    ‘That must have been when he wanted to make Ireland the same sort of running sore in the side of England that we’d made Spain for him. He’d have won, I think, if he could have fanned the flames from the ‘91.”
    “I would wager no one’s sorrier that he didn’t pull that off than the man himself. I hear St. Helena’s such a drab spot that it makes the stony ground of Connaught look a paradise.”
    “All the same, it’s too good for him,” Nick said sharply. “I’d seen what Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité did in France, Spain, Austria, and everywhere else he laid his foul paws. Ireland would not have escaped.”
    “Better Napoleon than the English.”
    “You only say that because you weren’t there.”
    “Well now,” David said with a shrug that could not have been bettered by a Frenchman, “you chose the winning side in the end. You were right not to take the advice of ‘helpful friends.’“
    They were interrupted by a girl herding a flock of sheep up the road. She glanced curiously at the two men on their horses. As she passed, it was as if she took all talk of politics with her.
    “Where are you going today?” Nick asked.
    ‘To your house, of course. It’s all over the county that you’ve come home. So after a trifle of business, out I came to seek you—and a glass of old Barry’s beer.”
    “Come on. He’s been keeping a barrel of the best for me.”
    * * * *
    In comfortable sloth, boots off, feet on the fireplace fender, Nick drank to David’s toast. “May peace bring you better fortune than war.”
    They talked a bit of old times, then David sat silently, staring into the heart of the fire. Nick, too, saw pictures in the crumbling peat bricks. Then he became aware that his friend kept flicking appraising glances at him, as though weighing him for some judgment.
    “What is it, man?” Nick asked at last.
    “I was only wondering—did you find a bride while abroad?”
    “A bride? No, of course not. Oh, there were women enough, but none I’d keep.”
    “Good.” Again, David fell silent. Then he chuckled.
    “You’ve not changed,” Nick said. “I can still tell when you are plotting some mischief.”
    “No mischief, but a good turn for my old friend. At least, it may prove to be a stroke of good luck for you. The benefits outweigh the dangers.”
    “That’s what you said the day we tried to cross the pasture to reach the apples. That bull took a different view of the matter.”
    David waved that memory away with a flick of his fingers. “You are neither married nor pledged? And you’d thank the man who put you in the way of even a thousand pounds?”
    “I’d thank the man who showed me the way to a few hundred. What’s in your mind?”
    David sat up and leaned forward with his fingers steepled before him. “Nick, I’m in love with the fairest girl in Ireland—nay, the world. She’s as sweet-natured as she is beautiful—a bride in a million. Though she is modest, I have experience enough of the female sex to know that she favors me above all the others.”
    “Good luck to you, then,” Nick said, sipping from his glass. He’d seen David Mochrie in love before this. Each time, whether through fate or a father’s investigation of his standing, it had come to nothing. “Make your proposal and marry the girl.”
    “It’s not that simple.”
    “It never is. What prevents