Patrica Rice Read Free Page B

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