Bride Wore Pearls_The - Fraternitas 03 (2012) by Liz Carlyle

Author:Liz Carlyle
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780062136428
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2012-07-29T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

So true a fool is love that in your will,

Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 57

Disappointments, the great William Penn had once written, are not always to be measured by the loss of the thing but by the overvaluation put upon it. Lady Anisha Stafford had believed herself inured to disappointment, having suffered more than a few. She had learned from an early age to temper her expectations, to value fairly what she had, and to cherish it while she had it, even as she remained ever mindful that joy, unlike disappointment, was often fleeting.

But Mr. Penn, Anisha darkly considered, had wed a sprightly chit of less than half his fifty-odd years who had proceeded to bear him eight children about as fast as other women tatted cushions. It did not seem to Anisha as if he had suffered too many disappointments in that regard.

On a sudden surge of bitterness, she tried to snap open her letter for the umpteenth time, but the paper had by now gone limp.

Behind her, Janet made a tch-tching sound. “Chin up, ma’am.” Her voice was sharp, as if she spoke to a child. “I’ve got to get this mess of hair put up before the carriage comes round, or you’ll be late.”

Anisha jerked her eyes up from the letter. “I’m sorry?”

In the mirror, Janet held her gaze steadily, one of the hair combs poised high. “Lady Anisha,” she said in mild exasperation. “You can keep readin’ that thing ’till the chickens roost, and you know not a blessed word of it’ll change.”

Anisha’s lips thinned. “I do hope, Janet, that you have not been reading my post.”

Janet stabbed in the comb. “No need, ma’am,” she said. “That’s laid on your dressing table four days now, and I know Lazonby’s hand, for it looks like wild monkeys trained him penmanship. And as to what’s in it—” Here, she paused to twist one rope of hair elaborately around another, then softened her voice. “As to what’s in it, my lady, well, I can guess as much, I daresay, from the look in your eyes.”

Anisha folded the letter, drew it smooth between her fingers, then gently laid it down. “That obvious, am I?”

“Well, I have known you, my lady, since coming out to India twenty-some years ago,” said the maid, calmly drawing up the rest of Anisha’s hair a long, even brushstroke. “Serene as pond water, you were, even as a wee girl.”

“Was I?” Absently, Anisha fiddled with Janet’s dish of hairpins. “I can’t recall.”

“Oh, I’ll never forget.” Janet began deftly twisting the length of Anisha’s hair into an elegant coronet. “What a proper little Indian lady you looked in your bright silks, with that skinny spine straight as a stick and your manner so calm. Like an exotic duchess, you were. Even Captain Stafford, God rest him, and those two hellions upstairs couldn’t throw you out. But Lazonby? Now he agitates you, ma’am, and always has. ’Tis a bad sign, that, when a man can knock a steadfast female all a’kilter.

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