Lady Farquhar's Butterfly by Beverley Eikli

Author:Beverley Eikli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gold, revenge, blackmail, historical suspense, beta hero, historical romantic suspense, dark past, regency romantic suspense, regency intrigue

CHAPTER TEN

NORMALLY, WHEN THE daffodils first popped their golden yellow heads from the almost frozen ground Olivia would experience a great surge of hope. Spring was here and the hunting season, only a few months hence, would mean she’d see less of Lucien. The world in general looked more promising.

Now, as she watched Nathaniel heedlessly trample those innocent harbingers of hope as he inspected the ropes that tied their trunks to his carriage this chilly April morning she felt nothing but despair.

Not for the first time she wondered at her strength of character in allowing him to trample her dreams and wishes in the same way he was trampling the clumps of daffodils that lined the gravel drive.

Yet what alternative did she have? She was in a perilous situation. Her social isolation was bad enough, but poverty stared her in the face.

With Max offering no guide as to what was in store for Julian, let alone herself, marriage to Nathaniel was the price she must pay.

‘Ah, Miss Dingley!’ Greeting Aunt Eunice with a self-satisfied smile as she issued out of the house in company with her sister, the clergyman added, ‘I have with me my sermon which you recently evinced a desire to hear and with which I shall amuse the congregation at Nuningford. I think Olivia shall find the journey passes in seemingly far less than the two hours the coachman estimates in this fine weather.’

Olivia gulped. Two hours in Nathaniel’s presence. Two hours listening to him prosing on about compassion and gratitude.

She could not do it.

Not to herself. Not to Julian. She imagined her boy as a young man forced to submit to Kirkman’s uncertain temper. Forced to be humble and grateful.

Nathaniel would trample over him. Trample over any youthful exuberance he might show like he was trampling over her and over the clumps of pretty yellow daffodils.

‘Will you get off them!’ Starting forward, she gripped his sleeve and tugged.

She heard Aunt Catherine gasp, and the shock in Aunt Eunice’s warning, ‘Have a care, Olivia!’

Surprisingly, his voice was low and calm as he turned. ‘Forgive me, Olivia, for paying such scant regard to your favourite flower.’ He raised her palm and kissed it with a smile. ‘Are you ready?’

‘I’m not going.’

She heard the same mutinous tone she’d used as a seventeen year old when she’d defied her aunts to be with Lucien.

Aunt Catherine stepped forward and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘Of course you must go, Olivia.’

Blackness blurred her vision. It was terror. The terror she would lose her nerve before she had shown the courage she might never show again.

‘No! I shan’t go to Nuningford!’

Aunt Catherine gasped. A spasm crossed the Nathaniel’s face as he took her forearm and steered her round to the carriage door. ‘Wedding nerves,’ he said crisply. ‘Perfectly understandable.’

‘I’m going to Bath!’ Olivia resisted like a nervous filly, flinching at his touch, unable to look him in the eye. ‘I’m sure the Nuningford congregation will be as awed by your sermon as I was last night, Nathaniel, but I am going to Bath with my aunts to stay with my cousin Mariah.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.