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didn’t esteem Declan, particularly after a tragic assault on a girl at Ballynaheath several years ago. It had had nothing to do with Declan, but because it had happened at his home, he’d been viewed as responsible. And when the girl had taken her own life rather than live with the shame, Declan had left Eireanne so that he might flee his private demons, and she . . . well, she had existed with the censure.
    “It doesn’t seem fair,” Molly had said one long ago afternoon. She and Mabe had been lounging about Eireanne’s suite of rooms at Ballynaheath as they were wont to do while Eireanne and her maid had packed her things. “It wasn’t as if you were diddling the maid or jumping off cliffs, was it?”
    The poor maid’s face had flamed red. It was an accepted fact in and around Galway that Molly and Mabe Hannigan could be rather outspoken. Frankly, the entire Hannigan clan had a reputation for speaking their minds, whether or not anyone wanted to hear it. Nevertheless, Molly had had a point. What had happened at Ballynaheath had been beyond Declan’s control. Yet he’d tried to make it up to Eireanne by arranging her acceptance at the Institut.
    “It is our only hope,” her grandmother had said on more than one occasion. “Eireanne is the only one of us who might remove the shadow that has been cast on our family name. She must marry well.”
    So at the age of one and twenty, which had been well past the age most young ladies of means were sent off to finishing schools, or even married, Eireanne had packed her bags and headed for Lucerne.
    She liked Lucerne. She liked the school, and the friends she’d made there. But she missed home, and she was excited to be coming home for Christmastide. However, Eireanne was aware she would not be returning to the Ballynaheath she’d always known: the one in which she’d lived with her grandmother as a guardian, quite alone, rambling about that huge old house while Declan had been off to England or where have you breeding and racing horses. He was married now, and his wife, Keira, was expecting their first child. Eireanne’s grandmother had written that Keira’s family was ever present.
    Eireanne was no longer the mistress. She was the guest. It was a wee bit disconcerting.
    A steady rain greeted Eireanne on the morning the coach arrived from Ballynaheath to carry her the last leg of her journey. She was well accustomed to the sort of winter travel one might expect across Ireland and therefore wore her sturdiest boots and a wool gown, buttoned up to the chin to keep the rain from her neck. She also wore her new red cloak. Her bags were lashed to the back of the coach and covered with a tarp.
    Mr. Donovan, the gentleman Declan had sent to escort Eireanne from Lucerne, was waiting for her in the foyer of the hotel when she came down. “The coach is just outside, miss. The lad will show you in.”
    “The lad? Aren’t you coming, Mr. Donovan?” she asked as she fit the hood of her cloak onto her head.
    “Aye, but we’ve a rider who is to come along. Once he shows himself, we’ll be off.”
    Eireanne wasn’t surprised—residents of County Galway often rode in or beside the Ballynaheath coaches. She always enjoyed the company on the nearly two-day drive, but for once she was thankful that whoever it was would accompany her on horseback, and not in the interior of the coach. She could scarcely tolerate having to chat about polite things such as the weather when she was bouncing about on a hard coach bench along a road pitted by constant winter rain.
    The first few hours of the trip were truly wretched. Travel in and out of Dublin had rutted the roads, and it seemed as if the coach hit every hole and rock. Eireanne was tossed about like a sack of potatoes and concentrated on keeping her seat. Every once in a great while, she would catch sight of the rider moving to the front of the coach. He had a fine black horse, as tall as any she’d ever seen. He was covered