Heritage of Shame by Hutchinson Meg

Author:Hutchinson, Meg [Hutchinson, Meg]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781789542738
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2019-05-15T16:00:00+00:00

16

They had talked of little after leaving Bentley Grange. Abel walked beside Anne trying to avoid looking at the moonlight dancing in her hair. He had thought often of her since that night in the church grounds, felt a pleasure in seeing her and speaking with her on the days she came to Regency Leather bringing the goods she and Unity had worked on, but he had not expected that pleasure to develop into this. Stealing a glance at the figure keeping pace with him he felt a quick sharp jerk in his chest, the same catch of breath in his throat as happened whenever he caught sight of her or heard the sound of her voice. Little Anne Corby… the child he had often fought over, often shielded from her snotty nosed cousin and tyrant of an aunt… she had been no more than six years to his grown-up fourteen… no more than a babe.

But Anne Corby was no longer a babe. Moving only his eyes he glanced again. Anne Corby was a woman and beneath a wan shadow which still showed in her face she was a beautiful woman. Beautiful and the heir of Butcroft House and Glebe Metalworks. In a few weeks she could take that inheritance into her own hands; Anne Corby would be a wealthy woman while Abel Preston would never be anything other than a saddle maker; yes, she would have money, wealth he could never match, but she would not know of an even greater wealth… the wealth of his love for her.

When had he realised it? Hands deep in his pockets Abel let his thoughts ramble in the soft silence which had settled over the newly mown fields and which was drawing them both into itself until to break it would feel akin to committing a crime. When had he realised he was in love with Anne Corby? The question was not new to him, he had asked it of himself many times when night brought no peace from the thought of her, no rest to a body aching to hold her close; but the answer… the answer when it finally came had been a shock, he could not remember a time he had not loved her. Truth was he had always been in love with Anne Corby!

Immersed within that same world of silvery silence Anne wrestled with the problem of whether or not to divulge what the older man had disclosed concerning the cause of his accident. She did not want to keep anything from Abel but would Sir Corbett wish her to speak of it to someone else? After all, he had said the vicar of Bentley Church had looked on his story of the amulet with clearly discernible disparagement and, visiting him after his accident, had spoken of that fog as a figment of an overwrought mind, an illusion born of shock and injury. Would Abel think along the same lines, would he think the owner of Bentley Grange

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