"Ah, well, ye know how it is, I being naught but a stable groom, and a strange one at that," he said with a wry smile, leading her through the kitchen and to the back door.

"Well, there is that," Luisa admitted. However, she truthfully could not bring herself to think of him as a mere servant. She knew that he was, but there was something about him-the tilt of his head, the angle of his arm, the light in his eye-that bespoke nothing short of n.o.bility. As she took his arm and tucked her hand far deeper into the crook of his elbow than the old Luisa would ever have dared, she gave him a rea.s.suring smile. "Mama knows I am a good judge of character, and something tells me that you mean me no harm."

His face split into a huge smile full of very white teeth, and the dimple to the left of his mouth made a welcome appearance. "Well, then, let us make haste, and while we are at it, may the dust of your carriage blind the eyes of your foe!"

Luisa's laughter was natural and gurgled from her throat with ease as she allowed him to lead her through to the kitchen and the back door. "What is that, some kind of poetry?"

"Aye, I suppose. It's the Irish in me; that's what it is, sayings I have heard and known since I was a babe in my cradle. They fill my head at the least opportune moments and are out o'my mouth before I have time to think."

"Oh? What is inopportune about this moment?" Luisa asked.

But she was never to learn his answer, for he had hauled open the door to reveal a curtain of swiftly falling snow. Luisa felt her heart sink. How was she to escape Percy and his perfidy now? Hoping her dismay did not show on her face, she turned to Mr. Flynn and asked, "What am I to do?"

"The same as all of the Brooksbys' guests this night, I warrant. They can hardly turn them out into this. G.o.d is good, but never dance in a small boat," he said, shaking his head. Pushing the door hard against a blast of wind, which sent eddies of snow across the flagstone floor, he added, "Nor can they turn ye out, no matter that ye live at the end of the drive. It's nearly a mile. Ye'd not make it, nor have I a wish to face your mother when she learns I allowed ye out in this."

Luisa shivered, feeling it to be a most appropriate response.

"Well," he drawled, "the kitchen fire will no doubt burn high with a bit o'coaxing, and there are plenty of the guests' cloaks and capes and I don't know what else to make ye a nice, soft pillow and mattress."

"You don't suppose the owners will mind, do you?" Luisa asked with some anxiety.

"Mind? They, as will be sleeping in soft beds while you have naught on which to lay your head but the flagstone floor?" he insisted. "The proper question to ask is, will ye mind?"

"Well, yes, I suppose I would. In fact, it won't do. I'll be fine with just my own," Luisa insisted, yet touched to the core that this man, whom she had only just met, would make her wants and needs his duty to fulfill. "But what of you?"

"Oh, I'll find me something somewhere; never ye fear." He then took her by the elbow and steered her to the bench by the fire. "As they are fond of saying in my country, 'firelight will not let you read fine stories, but it's warm, and you won't see the dust on the floor.'"

She did as he suggested, taking off her boots and hat, and stealing as many sidelong glances of him as she thought would go unnoticed. He certainly was the best-groomed groom she had ever met, though she had to own that she hadn't met many. However, he was also possessed of a natural confidence that seemed more in common with the n.o.ble cla.s.ses than that of an obsequious servant.

As he held aloft his large cloak in front of the fire, raising it up and then lowering it to warm it evenly, she couldn't help but notice the way his muscles rippled under the perfect cut of his evening coat. That, too, seemed a paradox. She knew very well that clothes cut to fit the owner were terribly expensive, as were the elegant fabrics from which his ankle-b.u.t.toned pantaloons, coat and waistcoat were constructed, not to mention his neckcloth, a veritable confection of lace. Though they had no groom of their own at Darlington Cottage, and she had no practical knowledge of such things, she had a strong suspicion that a year's salary could not have paid for his ensemble. Yet each piece fit far too well to have been borrowed unless he had a brother of equally excessive height who had recently come into funds.

It was all far too much to work out, what with the warmth of the fire having made her drowsy and a bit bemused.

"Go lie down before ye fall over," Mr. Flynn insisted, and as she could think of no reason to refuse, she did. Once she had laid her cloak on the floor as close to the fire as she dared, and had worked her scarf into a serviceable pillow, her eyes closed of their own accord.

A few moments later, she was unexpectedly enveloped in a layer of warmth as Mr. Flynn tucked another cloak around her feet and shoulders. With a sense of deep amazement, she realized it was the one he had been warming by the fire. Tears of grat.i.tude came to her eyes when the aroma she had enjoyed earlier in the evening found its way to her nose. How very kind he was to gift her with his own cloak for the night! She wanted to open her eyes and thank him but pretended to be asleep, instead. She was a bit unsure of herself and so very drowsy.

However, a few moments later she was fully aroused by the sound of wood sc.r.a.ping against stone and, startled, she opened her eyes to witness Mr. Flynn decamping with the bench upon which she had earlier been sitting. "The boot boy won't thank me for filching his bed," he whispered, "but I can't have him spending the night in your chamber, now can I?" And with that he lifted the bench in his arms and took it with him from the room, leaving Luisa to lay awake for some time wondering what she could have done to deserve such kindness from a stranger.

Sleep did claim her at last but a few hours later she awoke to a low-burning fire and the sounds of an argument in the pa.s.sageway. One of the voices was Percy's; she was sure of it. After pushing aside the heavy cloak, she went to the door and pressed her ear against the cold wood.

"I just wish to speak with her," Percy said, his voice thick with drink. "I want to 'pologize for ignoring her all evening."

"Ye can tender your apologies in the morning," came the firm response, one Luisa recognized as Mr. Flynn's.

"But I love her, and she loves me!" Percy expostulated.

There followed a profound silence; Luisa felt a stab of pain in her heart, the source of which she couldn't begin to fathom. It couldn't be sorrow for Percy; she wanted him no longer. Finally came Mr. Flynn's deadly calm reply. "If that were true, ye would have found her long since and seen to it that she was well looked after."

"I had my duty as a proper hos'," Percy insisted, his pickled tongue clearly reluctant to cooperate. "Had the devil of a time getting everyone bedded down; you can't even imagine, Flynn!"

"Ye say ye love her, yet ye leave her comfort for last?" Mr. Flynn demanded. "She is, as ye have told me often, a fine girl. She deserves better. And you! Fiend seize me, it doesn't matter. Och, man, if ye came to the wedding, ye would stay for the christening. Now go!"

"I can't," Percy said, whimpering. "Mother made me give up my room to that over-sized lout, old what's his name. The one as big as houses. I can hardly crawl in with him, now can I?"

"Nor can ye lie next to me on this bench, so off with ye," Mr. Flynn said with a patience Luisa wondered at.

"But I must see Luisa first. She'll know what to do. She always does. A right fine girl that Luisa is!"

"No, ye shan't," Mr. Flynn said in a tone not to be argued with. "I won't let ye. If I had my way, ye would never see her again."

Someone must have thrown a punch, for this p.r.o.nouncement was followed by sounds of a scuffle, and from what Luisa could ascertain, the boot boy's bench was heavily involved. Feeling it far beyond fair that Mr. Flynn's gentlemanly behavior should be met with such a lack of appreciation, she meant to put a stop to it and opened the door. She should not have worried; Mr. Flynn had Percy trussed up in his arms like a Christmas goose with only a jet-black curl fallen against his brow to show for his efforts.

Both looked towards the door with alarm, but it was Mr. Flynn's face she sought first. He looked briefly into her eyes long enough for her to know that he had guessed it was she who had been Percy's summer sweetheart. Then his eyes slid from her gaze in tandem with his arms as they slipped from their grasp about Percy, and, with a deep sigh, he took a step back.

Percy seemed hardly to notice. "Luisa," he whined, "I must speak with you. And as for you, Flynn, you were meant to be my friend!"

"As you were meant to be mine," Luisa said in a firm voice.

"Yes! The best kind of friend a woman can know. I loved you. Love you still," Percy said, his hands stretching towards her across the bench that kept them apart.

"Is that what you said to Ca.s.sandra Gardner when you met her in the stables earlier tonight?" she asked in a voice growing stronger.

While she waited for Percy to respond, she flicked a glance at Mr. Flynn, standing with his arms crossed and looking even more sinister than he had when he was but a shadow with a bird's head. Something about his expression bespoke disappointment, even sorrow, but whether it was for herself or Percy, she couldn't guess.

"Wha . . . what was that you said about Miss Gardner?" Percy countered, lifting his chin a fraction. "I mean to say, what is it you know about her?"

"For one, that she has promised a fine man to be his wife, and it is not you," Luisa replied in a voice strangely devoid of rage. It struck her that it was of no consequence to her to whom Percy was wed and that she hoped only for Ca.s.sy to escape an entrapment that would splice Percy to her side.

"I told you, Ca.s.sy is just a friend. I don't love her, not the way I love you," Percy insisted.

Nothing. Percy's words had no impact on her at all whatsoever. It wasn't until Mr. Flynn emitted a low hiss and turned away, pushing his hand through the ebony locks that tumbled across his brow, that Luisa felt a p.r.i.c.king of her heart. It would seem she cared more for the feelings of Mr. Flynn than her childhood friend; however, it would hardly do to say so. Instead she said in a voice that did not waver: "Percy Brooksby, I wish to never see you again." Before pushing the door shut she took one last look at his face and was gratified by his expression of total amazement. However, it was the look of relief washing over Mr. Flynn's face that gratified her most. She marveled that it would matter so much what an almost perfect stranger thought of her, what he might think about her . . . even what he might feel about her.

The cold from the stone floor against the soles of her feet put a stop to her thoughts and she bounded back to the warmth and safety of Mr. Flynn's large woolen cloak that smelled of soap, starch and safety. Sleep, however, was not to come again that night. Knowing he was there, just outside her door, pa.s.sing the dark hours on that hard, narrow bench... Knowing that he chose to suffer for her benefit made her feel both cherished and ungrateful. How could she be so selfish as to sleep? How could she stop thinking about him long enough to still her mind and emotions, not to mention the over-rapid pounding of her heart?

With the morning sun came a sense of calm she hadn't felt since before the day of King George's birthday fete, in fact, since before her father's death. Percy would marry someone else, and Luisa would not live a life of luxury and privilege. She would return to her home and tend to her mother and brother. She would plant roses and read novels and eat chocolate sweetmeats. She would perhaps be invited to sup at the vicarage once a year or however often the vicar's wife took pity on her in her fallen state. It all sounded perfectly ghastly, but somehow she felt it would be all right.

But first she had to leave the house. She knew Cook would soon be in to build up the fire for the morning chocolate and Luisa would rather not speak to her if it could be avoided. Luisa would have liked to see Mr. Flynn to thank him for all he had done, but she needed time to collect her thoughts; a carefully worded letter would be best. Quickly she donned her cloak, gloves and boots and opened the back door to a glittering world of white. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but the snow was too deep for more than a short trudge to the privy.

"Why walk when ye can go by sleigh?" She whirled to find Mr. Flynn rapidly closing the s.p.a.ce between them, and before she could decide what was best to be done, he was by her side. "Thanks be, the sun is shining, but the snow is still too deep to take ye safely home on your own."

"It's only a small journey, and my mother will be glad to know I'm all right," she began, but he hushed her.

"Nay! There's a lovely little sleigh in the stables, and we will have left before anyone else is even awake to know it's gone. You know how late these ladies and gentlemen sleep. Meanwhile, you will be on your way with a hot brick at your feet and a rug on your lap. But first ye must have something to eat!"

Once again the thought of possibly encountering Cook, an old friend from her days of larder raids with Percy, caused Luisa's stomach to clench in antic.i.p.ation of looks of pity and sighs of commiseration. Then again, perhaps she was simply hungry. "A roll and a bit of milk is all I need, though perhaps you require a bigger breakfast. I can wait. You have been so kind to me; the least I can do is to be patient."

"Breakfast for one tastes best when eaten by two," Mr. Flynn said as he disappeared into the larder. He emerged with a basket of eggs and potatoes, a board of bread and b.u.t.ter and a rasher of bacon under his arm. "Cook will doubtless have plenty to do serving hot chocolate to all those fine misses upstairs and who knows what else for the fine gentlemen, so you must leave it to me."

Setting a chair by the fire, he bade Luisa sit and handed her the tongs, whereupon he cut several thick slices of bread and pa.s.sed them to her to toast over the flames. He then filled a black skillet with lard and cut up the potatoes. Before long Luisa's nose was tingling with the smells of a delicious English breakfast. He even found time to make her a bit of hot chocolate, all while she turned the toast over the fire.

By the time they were seated at the table and eating, Luisa felt the last of her reserve melt away. As she watched him tuck into his food with more than the polite amount of enthusiasm, she began to wonder about his life in Ireland. "Is this what a good Irish breakfast is made of?" she asked.

"The potatoes, yes. We eat potatoes at almost every meal back in Cork. But we would have tea rather than chocolate or coffee, and sausage rather than bacon. And fish-lots and lots o'fish! Oh! And if I had had the time," he said around a hearty mouthful, "I would have made ye a batch of m'mother's scones. They melt in your mouth faster than the b.u.t.ter that's on them." He liberally slathered a piece of toasted bread. "But your toast is just as delicious," he added with a smile and a sly wink.

Luisa laughed and b.u.t.tered her own slice. "I surely should have made breakfast for you rather than the other way around. I have been hoping for a chance to do something to show you how grateful I am that you have looked after me so well."

"Grat.i.tude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all the others," he replied, reaching out to cover her hand with his for a moment. Luisa felt the moment to be both scandalously long and far too short. Her hand felt cold when he drew his away.

"Was it your mother who taught you to cook?" Luisa asked.

"Oh, aye. My parents raised us to fend for ourselves. We were made to learn it all, don't you see?"

"You can't have had much time for cooking once you went into service as a groom," Luisa insisted.

Mr. Flynn dropped his gaze from her face to his plate and made a great deal of fuss over which piece of potato to spear with his knife. "I'm not precisely in service."

"Oh," Luisa said with some surprise. "Then you aren't here at the abbey to act as groom to His Lordship?"

He swallowed a mouthful of egg and shook his head. "I am here more as Percy's reluctant companion than anything else, though I oft' feel more like his nursemaid. I am the groom only in my father's household, leastways when I'm home. We were all made to work; it's his way."

Luisa wondered again about Mr. Flynn's background. A man who had horses to groom, but hadn't the money to pay someone to do so was a puzzle indeed, but perhaps that was how it was done in Ireland. "I am the one who benefits, as it means I shall have the escort of an experienced groom for my journey home," she said with a warm smile.

"Aye, that!" he said, with what felt like a sense of relief. "Ye are a brave soul to trust such a poor groom as I!"

"Me? Brave?" Luisa exclaimed. "The first time you saw me, I was hiding in the pa.s.sageway like a quivering blancmange, I beg you to recall."

"I know that ye are brave," he said, shaking his head in denial of her words. "How much it must have cost you to come here when everyone has been so against ye."

It was Luisa's turn to swallow hard. "You know about that, do you? I suppose Percy spoke of it to you." She felt her body turn cold and then hot with shame.

"He didn't have to; I saw it for myself last night. But, yes, he did, and I confess, I couldn't understand it." He gave another shake of his head. "One minute you are the Sun, the Moon and the Stars to him, and the next he has a letter from someone telling him of your friend's unfortunate marriage. Suddenly you were beyond the pale. It was then I decided I had had enough of Percy Brooksby."

"Then why are you yet here? You could have been home with your family for Twelfth Night."

He opened his mouth to answer, but he paused, looking, for the first time since she'd met him, a bit unsure of himself. Leaning back in his chair, he asked, "Would it sound like a load of slippery untruths if I told ye I had a mind to meet this paragon of his?"

Luisa felt her cheeks blush; she looked down at her plate. "No. That is, yes! Oh, I don't know!" She raised her gaze to see he was laughing, if only with his eyes. She laughed too, then asked, "All right then, Mr. Flynn, what do you make of her, pray tell?"

Mr. Flynn cleared his throat and returned to his breakfast. He took so long to respond that Luisa wished she might sink through the floor. Finally he said, "Well, it's clear to me that ye have not an ounce of spite in ye, else ye would have had Miss Gardner between your claws such as I have seen with any number o' girls of my acquaintance. She deserves no less. Yet ye seem to bear her no ill feelings."

"I confess, I did at first, but then I realized she's just as much a victim of Percy's whims as I."

He nodded. "It's naught but the truth. Your seeing that so clearly, it's that which makes ye wise. Ye are also humble, else ye would have thought naught of borrowing a few fine cloaks for your bed. Then there's the way ye let Percy off so lightly. Had I been ye, I would have given him the tongue lashing of his life. That tells me that ye are kind and forgiving."

"It is you who are kind. So very kind!" Luisa dared to look into his face and was taken aback by the tenderness in his eyes.

Again he cleared his throat and, in a lower voice, said, "Ye are pure and chaste. From all that Percy said of ye, I knew it could not be otherwise. And ye are honest." He hastened to add the last as if he was as anxious to change the subject as she was for him to do so. "There is no pretense about ye. Ah! And ye are grateful!" Placing his hand again on hers, he asked, "How could I forget that?"

Abashed, Luisa could not bring herself to look at anything but his hand covering hers against the rough plank table, but soon an undeniable force pulled her line of vision to meet his own. They sat, searching each other's faces for answers to queries she had never before considered, until finally he said, "How so many virtues could be in one cailin, one who is so impossibly beautiful . . . There are no Irish proverbs that speak to such a miracle as that!"

Luisa thought of her hair-such a commonplace brown, and her skin-marred by a spatter of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were large but of an indeterminate color, neither blue nor green nor brown nor gray, and her nose was far from what one would find gracing the face of a Diamond of the First Water, as it had a bit of a tilt at the end. That he found her beautiful was a miracle indeed!

She was saved from formulating a reply, as Cook bustled into the room. "Who would have thought we would be in such a taking this morning?" she cried. "I have never had the pleasure of waiting upon such a lot of whining, demanding, ungrateful children!" Reaching for a large pot, she groused on as if there were no one there to hear her. "Now, if they had been the master's London set, well, that would have been different. I would have expected them to sleep late and wish to wake with a roll in their mouths before their eyes had fully opened, but not those as live in this here village, I declare!"

Luisa was relieved that Cook had other things to think of besides Percy's perfidy, and she was happy to have a reason to jump up from the table to help. Mr. Flynn also lent a hand between his tasks of heating bricks for their journey and hitching the horses to the sleigh. When all was ready, and Cook was carrying up trays of hot chocolate and cold b.u.t.ter and rolls to the guests, Luisa waited, somewhat reluctantly, by the door for Mr. Flynn to fetch her. It stung to know that she was not likely to speak with Mr. Flynn again, but it also thrilled her that, first, she had an entire sleigh ride with him ahead of her. She intended to savor every moment and store them up, like jewels in a case, against the stormy weather ahead.

Finally the door to the outside opened, and Mr. Flynn was there. She was startled but pleased when he lifted her into his arms to carry her through the snow to the waiting sleigh. After placing her carefully in her seat, he drew a warmed rug onto her lap and adjusted the heated brick at her feet. As he climbed in beside her, she smelled again the wonderful scent of his wool cloak and thought of how this would be the last time she would be close enough to him to notice. This was the last time she would speak to him, the last time she would see him.

Turning in her seat so she could fill her gaze with him for the length of the journey, she asked, "What is your home like? Do you look forward to returning?"

Giving the horses their head, he loosened his grip on the reins and turned to face her, as well. "Ireland is the fairest place in all the world, and I would live nowhere else."

"And your house-is it as large as my gatehouse? If there are stables, surely it must be at least as large. And you live there as your father's groom?"

"Aye, well, I might have misled ye a bit about that," he said, his green eyes ever more brilliant against an infinite background of white. "I do groom for my father, but only because he insists that his sons work at something, and I have an accord with the horses. My brother Sean is a genius with the numbers, so he helps with the accounts. My brother Seamus rides the land and helps with the sheep."

"You have sheep?" Luisa asked, more than a little surprised.

"Oh, aye, a few. Everyone around us, as well. Ireland is littered with sheep," he said, with a shrug.

"But sheep require the care of many people, as do horses. You must have a large household and a larger house to keep them," Luisa suggested.

"Yes, I suppose it's large. Some say it's the largest in County Cork, but I wouldn't go so far as to boast that."

"So," Luisa said, "you live in a large house with a stables and horses, on land large enough to sustain a few sheep and an income that requires your brother's help to keep track of. Mr. Flynn," she asked tartly, "who are you?"

"n.o.body," he said, with another shrug. "Leastways, not anyone who is someone here in England. Back home I am known as the Master's eldest, but it would be uncanny strange if anyone here were to have heard aught of a simple Irish lord."

Luisa restrained a gasp of dismay. Mr. Flynn was no "mister" at all-he was heir to a lord. Her heart sank, and with it her barely formed hopes that Mr. Flynn would choose to stay in England and be, at the very least, her dear friend. Turning to face the road again, she asked stiffly, "How could your family let you go? They must be anxious to have you back."

"And myself returned to them, as well," he said as he slowly reclaimed the reins and gave the horses a flick to speed them on their way.

The rest of the journey was silent, strained and excessively cold. Luisa was glad of it, as the tears froze along her lower lashes before they could slip down her cheeks and betray her. She felt as if it were her heart that had frozen then fallen to the stone floor of the abbey kitchen to break into a thousand jagged little pieces. The pain was far sharper than Percy's rejection, far deeper than the rejection of the entire village put together.

How could she feel so much for a person she had met barely twelve hours previous? That he cared for her a little, she was sure of, but how was it possible? And so unfair; he was the heir to a t.i.tle, and she the daughter of a gatekeeper.

The horses stopped on their own after they reached the large, black, wrought-iron gate. There was nothing to be done but move her feet, climb out of the sleigh and begin her new life, one without hopes or dreams to keep her warm, and with spring so long in coming. Someday soon Percy would marry. Her brother would open the gate to his bride, and Luisa the Spinster would watch life go by through the window. And Mr. Flynn-he would be gone, far away, in Ireland. It was an unendurable thought, and she felt sobs clamoring in her chest. Mortified, she gave in to the temptation to flee, but as she leaned forward to rise, she felt a large hand on her arm and Mr. Flynn drew her gently back to her seat.

"Ye don't have to get out," he said, as if it were a summer day full of sun and possibilities and, above all, time.

Brushing ice-cold tears from her cheeks, she turned to face him. "I don't understand."

"Don't ye, mo chroi?" he said, his words escaping his lips as softly as the puff of steam rising on the air.

"No, I don't. Not French or Gaelic or anything at all!" she cried. "You are looking at me as if I should, but it seems I am wrong, unforgivably wrong, about most everything."

Taking her hand, he laid it against his cheek, trapping it in place, making it utterly impossible to finger the dimple she had been longing to touch all day. "It's the Gaelic for 'my heart.' It's what a man calls the cailin who has stolen his."