A Heart for the Taking Read Online Free PDF Page A

so. I’ve read that they do wear feathers in their hair, and with those long, black braids and that shockingly bright-colored blanket around his shoulders, I would say that he looks very much like what one would expect.”
    Ellen giggled, her blue eyes sparkling. “Oh, Fancy, must you be so stuffy? You sound like a blue-stocking.”
    Fancy laughed ruefully. “Mayhap I
am
a blue-stocking. Just like old Lady Wells in the village.”
    “Not you! Lady Wells would never have consented to coming to the Colonies—even just for a visit as we have done.” Ellen shot her sister a sideways glance. “I still cannotbelieve that we are actually here. I was certain right up until the ship sailed that you would change your mind.”
    Fancy slipped an arm around her sister’s slim waist. “Hmm, I almost did, poppet. A dozen times I have asked myself if I was doing the right thing, leaving England and coming for an extended stay at Walker Ridge. Jonathan Walker appears to be a proper sort of man and I’m sure he’ll make you a fine husband, but . . .”
    Her cheeks flushed a deeper hue, Ellen asked softly, “He has not actually offered for me, has he?”
    “No,” Fancy replied slowly, “but there is no use for us to pretend not to know why we are here—he has, without taking the final step, committed himself as far as an honorable man could.” She sighed. “I just wish . . .”
    Ellen leaned nearer her sister, her sweet features full of understanding. “What?” she asked softly. “Wish that he were not so much older? Or that I was not so young? Or that he lived in England and not in the New World?”
    Fancy grimaced. “All of those things, I expect.”
    The sisters made a pretty pair as they stood there together at the side of the ship, Ellen as fair as Fancy was dark, both young women a bit above average height, both smallboned and slim, but nicely rounded in all the appropriate places. There was a facial resemblance between them, but it was not strong; Fancy’s chocolate brown hair complemented her peach-kissed complexion and cat-shaped golden brown eyes, while Ellen’s wheat-fair hair and bright blue eyes blended attractively with her creamy skin. Both possessed a delicate tip-tilted little nose, a rosy mouth just made for kissing, and a delightfully rounded chin with an unmistakably stubborn cast to it. Ellen’s expression was open and sunny, Fancy’s more reserved, her slightly slanted topaz eyes and slim, dark, almost haughtily arched brows giving her a faintly exotic air. Fancy, more properly called Lady Merrivale, was the widow of a baron and was ten years Ellen’s senior, although anyone looking at them this fine, sunny morning in late June would have been hard-pressed to decide which one of the sisters was the eighteen-year-old andwhich one had just recently enjoyed her twenty-eighth birthday.
    As Ellen said frequently, Fancy didn’t
look
like a dowager baroness. And Fancy would be the first one to admit that she certainly didn’t feel like one. But she had always been the more pragmatic of the two, having taken over the care of Ellen upon their mother’s death, when Ellen had been six and she had been only sixteen.
    Their father, Edward Merrivale, had been a charmingly careless rogue who had infrequently remembered that he was married and the father of two young daughters. He was content to leave his wife and children immured on his small estate in Surrey while he enjoyed himself in London, gaming and wenching as if there were no tomorrow. His wife’s death had merely caused a faint ripple of dismay in his carefree existence. His reaction upon learning of his wife’s demise had been only to comment how very inconvenient it had been for Sally to die and leave him the care of their daughters. Sally
knew
that he didn’t have the least idea how to go on with children.
    Edward had been thrilled when he had discovered that Fancy was extremely capable of stepping into her mother’s position as chatelaine of