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in a black coat and a large-brimmed hat, from which rain poured in rivulets. She could make out nothing but his broad back and could not guess if he was young or old, tall or short.
    They stopped late that day in Athlone, a village on the river Shannon, which they would cross the next morning. Eireanne was exhausted from the travel and went straight up to the room Mr. Donovan had arranged for her.
    Unfortunately, rain greeted them again the next morning, and with a weary sigh, Eireanne took her place in the coach, wincing at the soreness when she sat on the bench.
    But as they waited for the ferry, Mr. Donovan opened the door of the coach. “Beg your pardon, miss, but will you mind if Mr. Bristol waits within? The weather is foul.”
    “Not at all,” she said, and the door instantly opened wider as a man surged into the interior. He had his hat pulled low over his eyes, but she noted that he was solidly built, with thick thighs and broad shoulders and big hands.
    “Thank you,” he said, and fell onto the bench across from her, taking up what seemed like all the empty space in the interior of the coach. His legs, long and muscular, framed hers. His shoulders filled the bench across from her. “I told Mr. Donovan I would be happy to ride on the driver’s bench,” he said, shaking the water from his gloves. “But I am rather glad he insisted otherwise. The rain is coming down in sheets.”
    He had a peculiar accent, Eireanne thought, and she watched as he tossed his gloves aside. He seemed to notice then that water was dripping off the brim of his hat, and he swept it off his golden head. He brushed his fingers through his hair and glanced up, a smile on a surprisingly handsome face.
    But his smile froze, his eyes widened.
    As the ferry pushed away from the banks, the gentleman gaped at Eireanne as if he was seeing an apparition. A sliver of horror raced through Eireanne, and she glanced down to see if something was amiss on her person.
    “It’s you, ” he said.
    “Me?” Eireanne asked, looking up again and into a pair of maple brown eyes. Oh, but he was a handsome man, there was no doubt. High cheekbones, a square jaw—
    “You don’t recall?”
    Eireanne blinked. Recall what, for heaven’s sake?
    “You saved my life.” He suddenly flashed a charmingly bright grin. “You are the angel who saved me.”
    “I beg your pardon, but you have obviously confused me with someone of great valor. I assure you I have saved no one, and if I had, I am certain I would have remembered it.”
    “It may not have seemed such a critical moment to you, but had you not come along and bid me to look at the horizon, I might have thrown myself overboard to end my misery. I believed you were an angel come to save me.”
    Eireanne gasped with surprise. This was the helpless man she had seen on the deck of the St. Mary ? But that man had seemed smaller. And grizzlier. That man had had the growth of a beard over skin the color of this morning’s dull sky. “That was you ?” she asked disbelievingly.
    “Do you not recognize me?” he asked laughingly. “I’ve cleaned up a bit, but on my honor, I am the same quivering mass of flesh you encountered on the deck of that ship.”
    “No, I do not recognize you,” she said, smiling now. “I scarcely saw your face at all that night, and what little I did see was rather green.”
    He laughed. “I was green through and through, all right. I think I can say with all confidence that I shall never be a sailor.”
    This man looked entirely too virile to have been as dreadfully ill as he’d been. “At least you seem recovered and in good health.”
    “As long as my feet are planted on solid earth, I seem to do all right. Or rivers,” he said, casting his arm to the window. “It’s the waves that plague me. Now this is indeed a pleasant surprise to find you again, madam. I might thank you for your kind help, as I desperately wished to do that night.”
    She laughed. “Truthfully, sir,