I craned my neck to peek at our driver again. The violent jostling was causing his body to skid toward the open end of the carriage. One major dip in the terrain, and he'd shoot out of the vehicle like a log out of a flume.

I needed to do something.

"Look at that pretty circle a red flowers up ahead," Nana said in a high vibrato, as we approached a major intersection of pathways. "Be nice to stop for a picture."

We were beyond them before I had time to blink.

"I don't mean to complain, dear, but we're missin' all the good photo opportunities."

I scrambled over the backrest of the driver's seat, crouching precariously on the cushion. "Whoa, Nellie!" I yelled.

THUMP-THUMP. The carriage pitched sharply to the right, bouncing the driver across the floor. I grabbed a fistful of his jacket to keep him from falling out. I looked up.

Dead ahead was a stand of trees, and Nell was racing straight toward them.

"Hold on tight!" I yelled to Nana.

I ducked low on the seat. WHUP-WHUP! WHUP-WHUP! Foliage thrashed the sides of the carriage as we whipped between two trees. I heard an ominous creak. I opened one eye to see what was ahead.

Oh no.

We hit the pond at breakneck speed and hurdled the concrete lip like one of the losing drivers in the chariot race in Ben Hur. Off flew a front wheel. Off flew a back wheel. Creeeeek! KABOOM! The sudden stop catapulted me off the seat and into the air. I landed on my back in a foot of water that shot up my nose all the way to my brain. Snorting, sputtering, and blinded by streams of nonwaterproof mascara, I jackknifed upward to hear a man shout, "You there! There's no swimming allowed in the pond!"

I let out a startled yelp as our driver's body sluiced out of the carriage and landed eyeball-to-eyeball on top of me.

"That goes for him, too!" the man added.

Most single women who visit Ireland probably dream of having their bones jumped by an Irishman as witty as Oscar Wilde, as inspiring as William Butler Yeats, and as handsome as Pierce Brosnan. That my bones were being jumped by a short, bald guy who didn't appear to be breathing was fairly typical of the direction in which my life was headed. All that was missing was the freelance photographer who would snap my picture and sell it to a tabloid newspaper. I could see the headlines now: TOUR ESCORT HAS SEX WITH DEAD MAN IN POND! That would go over really well in Windsor City.

It was at that moment that I heard the unmistakable whirr of Nana's new Polaroid Insty-Print camera. "Smile, dear!"

"Here's one of the pond in Saint Stephen's Green." Nana handed Tilly Hovick a photograph as we stood at the front desk of the Shelbourne Hotel, waiting for our room keys. Tilly was a retired professor of anthropology at Iowa State University, and was slated to be Nana's roommate for the duration of the tour.