The Lady's Fate (The Reluctant Grooms Volume II) by Gallagher Anne

Author:Gallagher, Anne [Gallagher, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Shore Road Publishing
Published: 2011-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

The next day Violet awoke to unfamiliar sounds, girls talking, loud noises coming from below stairs, an uneven ticking that proved to be drops of water leaking from the window casing. Violet sighed and pushed the covers from her. She would not sleep any more and decided to make the best of her homecoming. She dressed in a rather ugly day gown gathered from her closet. The pink she had worn yesterday still lay on the chair where she had tossed it, wrinkled beyond imagining. Looking in the small mirror attached to the dresser, she tied a ribbon around her hair and pinched her cheeks. Her eyes, still a bit swollen needed a cold compress, but they could wait until she escaped her mother’s interrogation.

Violet entered the breakfast room and was grateful Camelia was the first to embrace her.

“Oh, Violet, it is so good to see you. I have missed you terribly.”

“And I you, sister.” Violet gave her a kiss on the cheek, as well to her other siblings and lastly to her mother.

“Gwynnie said you were asleep last night and thought better of waking you,” her mother said, reaching for a piece of toast. “Said you looked positively done in. I am glad to see you are recovered.”

“I am better today, Mother. It was an arduous journey and I am glad I am home,” Violet lied. In truth, she wanted nothing more than to be back at Fairhaven.

“Well, now, sit down. Tell me all that has transpired. I should like to hear more about Lady Penny’s beneficence. How did she come to you so quickly after her departure? Had you kept up a correspondence with her?”

Violet sat at her familiar place at the table and poured a cup of tea. Holly and Ivy ate and did not seem to care Violet was home. Camelia observed her sister with tenderness, for they were unusually close now that she had visited Fairhaven, and Violet felt her sister’s hand more than once upon her back.

“I do not exactly know how she came to be at Fairhaven,” Violet said. “You left and Lord Haverlane departed the next day to attend His Highness. Lady Penny arrived without notice.” She did not dare tell her mother it was at Haverlane’s request.

“I wonder why?” Rose asked.

“I do not know, Mother, but I am grateful she did. Lady Penny has been most kind.” Violet took a piece of toast, smothered it with jam, and laid it on her plate. She reached for the eggs.

“Pray, do not start eating as if you have never seen food,” her mother said curtly. “Have a care to watch your figure now it has lessened considerably. You shall never fit into the gowns Lady Penny bestowed upon you, and I have little money to spare for new. As it is, there is only so much I may afford for your ball gowns.”

How could that be? She knew Haverlane had paid her mother two hundred pounds for her service to Jane. An unimaginable amount by anyone’s standards and more than generous to discount her mother calling him a miser.

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