The Stolen Bride Read Online Free Page B

last night, well past the conclusion of the supper party, Captain Brawley, currently in command of a regiment stationed south of Limerick, had requested a private audience with the earl. Tyrell had attended, as was his right. And the young Captain had informed them that Sean O’Neill’s whereabouts had been discovered.
    Shocked, they had learned that Sean had been incarcerated in a military prison in Dublin for the past two years. Their disbelief and horror growing, they were told that Sean had been charged with and tried for treason. There was no explanation for his lengthy incarceration or the failure of the authorities to hang him, much less to bring the facts forward to the family. Then Brawley had announced the most shocking news of all. Three days ago, Sean had taken the prison warden hostage and he had escaped.
    Sean O’Neill was a fugitive now, wanted by the authorities, a bounty on his head.
    And at any moment, Tyrell expected him to appear at Adare.

CHAPTER TWO
    E VERYONE KNEW that hell was blazing fire. Everyone was wrong.
    Hell was darkness. It was darkness, silence, isolation. He knew—he had just spent two years in it. Three days ago, he had escaped.
    And because the light of day hurt his eyes, because everyday sounds startled and frightened him, because he was being pursued by the British and he did not intend to hang, he had been hiding in the woods by day and making his way south by night. He had been told that there were men in Cork who would help him flee the country. Radical men, men who were traitors, too, men who had nothing to lose except for their lives.
    It was almost dawn. He was covered with sweat, having traveled from the prison in Dublin to the outskirts of Cork in just three nights by foot. Once he had realized he might never be let out of the blackhole that was his cell, he had started to use his body to keep it strong, beginning to plan his escape. Exercising his body had been simple—he had found a ledge on the wall and he had used it to hang from or to pull up on. He had used the floor in a similar manner, pushing up until his shoulders and arms ached. He had tried to keep his legs strong by practicing fencing exercises, concentrating on lunges and squats, but his body was not used to walking or running or covering any distance at all. The muscles he had not used for two years now screamed at him in protest and pain. His feet hurt most of all.
    Exercising his mind had been excruciatingly difficult. He had focused on mathematical problems, geography, philosophy and poems. He had quickly realized he must keep his mind occupied at all times—otherwise, there was thought. Thought led to memory and memory led to despair and worse, to fear. Thought was to be avoided at all cost.
    In his hand, he carried a burning torch. The torch was his greatest treasure. Having been immersed in almost total darkness for two years, a source of light was as important to him as the air he breathed, or as his freedom. The torch felt as weighty in his hand as a king’s ransom. Sean O’Neill looked up at the sky as it turned a dark, dismal gray. He no longer neededthe light if he dared to go on. The sole other survivor from the village of Kilvore had instructed him to proceed to a specific farm as swiftly as possible, and he knew he must go on, somehow transcending his fear. He carefully extinguished the torch.
    The Blarney Road he was on was made of rough and rutted dirt, and led into the town’s center. Somewhere up ahead was the Connelly farm. He had been assured that there he would find comfort and aid.
    His heart beat hard and heavily as he walked through the woods, not daring to use the roadway but keeping parallel to it. From the width of it and the wheel ruts, he saw that it was well used. In the three long nights he had been traveling, he’d avoided all roads and even dirt paths, keeping to the hills and the forest. He’d heard troops once, but that had been a hundred miles north of where he now