Reunited with the Major by Anne Herries

Author:Anne Herries
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Samantha looked through the invitations that had been delivered to her home the past week and frowned as she noticed that at least three hostesses had neglected to send invitations to their forthcoming events: Lady Martin’s ball, Lady Halstead’s rout and Lady Smythe’s dance for her eldest daughter, all of them large affairs that Samantha would have expected to receive an invitation to.

It really was a nuisance that so many of these haughty ladies had chosen to listen to unpleasant gossip about Rosemarie’s mother. Samantha had noticed a certain coolness in a few of the hostesses who had invited her, a reproach in their manner that told her they blamed her for having brought the bastard daughter of a man little known in London into their circles. The fact that Rosemarie’s father had adopted her, making her his legal heir seemed not to have been taken into account, if it were even known, of course. Had anyone asked her, Samantha would have told that person the truth, but the subject was never mentioned. However, Samantha had been aware of a certain coolness in the manner of ladies who had been happy enough to acknowledge her in the past.

Had Rosemarie’s father been better known in town, approved of and liked, it would have made things easier, but he had avoided bringing his family to town, taking his daughter to Bath or to Scotland instead. Samantha knew from Rosemarie that he’d spoken of taking her for an extended tour of Europe when she was eighteen, perhaps hoping to find a suitable marriage for her abroad, where the facts of her birth might have been more easily overlooked. But he’d become ill when she was barely seventeen and died soon after, leaving her to the unloving care of her aunt and uncle.

Rosemarie had not received a second letter from her uncle and Samantha had begun to hope that he had forgotten his rebellious niece or at least given up hope of forcing her to a marriage she disliked. It was this whispering campaign that worried her most now, for it was not easy to stop once it started.

If only Brock would return to London, but Samantha had heard nothing from him for a week or more and imagined that he must be in the thick of marriage plans down at Miss Langton’s family home.

It caused her a little pang of distress when she thought of Brock married to the cool beauty. She hoped she was not jealous or unkind—but she had not liked Miss Langton when they met in society, and she’d thought the way she encouraged Lord Armstrong’s advances when she was engaged to Brock quite wrong. There was no fault in being friendly or even in flirting a little, but there had been more than that in the girl’s eyes as she looked up at him, as if she’d been hoping for more than a mere flirtation.

No, she was being harsh. Samantha admitted it to herself. She had no right to condemn the girl, none whatsoever—but she would hate to see Brock unhappy.

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