"Roberts, Nora - Irish Hearts 1 - Irish Thoroughbred" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

Her enemies had been the lack of time and the lack of money. When, after
six long months, she was again left alone, Adelia was near the point of
exhausted desperation. Her aunt was gone, and though she had worked
unceasingly, the farm had had to be sold for taxes.

She had written to her only remaining relative, her father's elder
brother, Padrick, who had emigrated to America twenty years previously,
informing him of his sister's death. His answer had been immediate, the
letter warm and loving, asking her to join him. The last sentence of the
missive was a simple, gentle command: "Come to America; your home is
with me now."

So she had packed her few belongings; sold or given away what could not
be taken with her, and said goodbye to Skibbereen and the only home she
had ever known...

A sudden movement of the plane jolted Adelia back from memory. She sat
back against the cushions of her seat, fingering the small gold cross
she always wore around her neck. There was nothing left for her in
Ireland, she told herself, fighting against the flutters of her stomach.
Everything she had loved there was dead, and Padrick Cunnane was the
only family she had left, the only link with what she had once had. She
pushed back a surge of sudden, unaccustomed fear. America, Ireland--what
difference did it make? Her shoulders moved restlessly. She would
manage. Hadn't she always managed? She was determined not to be a burden
to her uncle, the vague, shadowy man she knew only from letters, whom
she had last seen when barely three. There would be work for her, she
reasoned, perhaps on the horse farm her uncle had written of so often
over the years. Her ability to work with animals was innate, and she had
absorbed a varied knowledge of medicine through her experiences, her
skill being such that she had often been called on to aid in a difficult
calving or stitch up a rent hide. She was strong, despite her diminutive
stature--and, she reminded herself with an unconscious squaring of
shoulders, she was a Cunnane.

Surely, she told herself with more confidence, there would be a place
for her at Royal Meadows where her uncle worked as trainer for the
Thoroughbred racing stock. There'd be no fields needing plowing, no cows
needing milking, but she'd earn her bread and butter if she had to work
as a scullery maid. She wondered suddenly, with a small frown, if they
had scullery maids in America.

The plane touched down, and Adelia disembarked and entered the Dulles
terminal in Virginia, where she found herself gaping in confusion,
fascinated by the scene, confused by the babble of foreign tongues, the
odd mixture of people. Her eyes lingered over an East Indian family in
full native dress. She turned to observe two teenagers in faded denims
strolling by hand in hand, followed by a scurrying middle-aged
businessman clutching a leather briefcase.