Lost Love Found by Bertrice Small Read Free Book Online Page A

of that magnificent castle. I can hardly believe it.”
    “You have done well by your daughters, Mama. Anne will one day be mistress of Holly Hill, and Bevin will have her Irish castle You will one day have to find an earl for Maggie, for she is determined to have the best wedding of us all. Only an earl will justify the expense,” Valentina teased her mother.
    “But what of you, my dear?” Aidan asked. “You will one day wish to marry again.”
    “Oh, no, Mama! You will not sing that tune with me again! When will you accept the fact that I am the odd duck in this family? No man has ever touched my heart, and I doubt one ever shall. I do not pretend to understand it, but there it is. I married Lord Barrows to please you and Papa, and though he was a good man, it was a terrible mistake. I shall not make such a mistake again. If I cannot have the kind of love that you and my father have, I will not settle for a lesser emotion and tell myself I must be happy. Never again!”
    Aidan St. Michael said nothing. There really was nothing she could think of with which to refute her daughter’s argument.
    She had realized, of course, that Valentina was not in love with Edward Barrows. Still, she had found no logical reason to discourage the match once Valentina agreed to it, so Aidan had closed her eyes to the facts and let the wedding take place. At twenty, Valentina was somewhat long in the tooth for a first marriage.
    Aidan had not married her husband until she was in her middle twenties. Still, she reasoned, there had been mitigating circumstances in her case, which were not there in her daughter’s. It did not occur to Aidan to consider that, while it was true that she’d had the responsibility of her aged father, she might also have simply been a late bloomer. Her eldest child—so like her in many ways—might be a late-blooming rose, as she had been. But the idea had never occurred to Aidan. What was the matter with Valentina, she fretted, that she could not seem to find love?
    In the weeks to come, however, Aidan St. Michael, Lady Bliss gave little thought to her widowed daughter. There would be time to deal with Valentina’s problems later. For the present, she was far too busy preparing for her third daughter’s wedding. It was to be a very grand one. Aidan seriously doubted that any mother had ever married off three daughters so well in the short space of less than six months.
    In the summer of 1596 Conn O’Malley had taken his family to Innisfana Island, the ancestral home of the O’Malleys of mid-Connaught, to see their grandmother, Anne O’Malley. Anne O’Malley was sixty that year, and seeing the deteriorating conditions in which his mother lived, Conn sought to bring her back to England with him, but she would not come. Her warm brown eyes were sympathetic as she had told him, “I was born in Ireland. I have lived my entire life here. I shall die here. And I will say no more about it, Conn.”
    He accepted her decision, though he was most unhappy about it. His brothers, through stupidity and foolishness, had lost all the wealth they had gained in the years that they had sailed ships for England’s sake, harassing the proud dons along the Spanish Main. Embittered by their losses, blaming everyone but themselves, particularly Elizabeth Tudor and all for which she stood, Brian, Shane, and Shamus O’Malley currently involved themselves in petty piracies along the Irish and Scots-Irish coasts. In the summer of 1596, they were already embroiled with the Earl of Tyrone and his rebellions. It was a lost cause, Conn knew, and his brothers’ actions made him fear for his mother’s future safety.
    It was during that summer of 1596 that Bevin St. Michael, aged eleven, met Lord Glin’s eldest son and namesake, Henry Sturminster. The future master of Glinshannon was seventeen and fresh from studying in France. He thought himself quite the traveled sophisticate, but one look at Bevin St. Michael, who had her