A Stolen Heart Read Online Free PDF

him there. But, somehow, looking into Alexandra’s huge brown eyes, alive with interest, he felt little hesitation. She might know as little about the place or people as any of the other young ladies he knew, but one thing he was certain of was that her interest was genuine. It occurred to him that perhaps there was something to be said for Miss Ward’s policy of frankness. “I spent every bit of profit I made investing in land. Eventually I bought a piece that connected the rest of my plantation to the sea. It had a lovely white beach. I was walking along it one day and stepped on this dull round stone, but when I lifted it up, I saw that it wasn’t like other stones. It was an unpolished ruby.”
    “On the sand?” Alexandra asked in astonishment.
    He nodded. “Yes. About the size of a gold sovereign. I’ve never been so shocked in my life.” He smiled faintly, remembering the heat of the sun on his shoulders, the sound of the surf crashing nearby, the pounding excitement in his heart as he had stared at the stone. “A stream ran through there, joining the sea, and it had washed the ruby and several other stones down, depositing them on the beach. I found some other small rubies and a number of sapphires. So I started mining the stream and the area around it. And that is how the tea plantation became my secondary business.”
    “So you own a ruby mine?”
    “Mostly sapphires. But I sold it before I moved back to England. I kept the plantation because I had a very good manager, but the mine—well, I find, like you, that things don’t run very well without one’s personal effort.” He shot her an amused glance.
    “You have lived a very exciting life.” It was no wonder, she thought, that a dangerous air clung to him.
    Thorpe shrugged. “I have done what I had to do.”
    Alexandra raised a brow. “You have to admit that you have done things few of the rest of us have—lived in exotic lands, shot tigers, found gemstones littering the sands….”
    He chuckled. “It sounds more exciting than it seemed at the time. Then it mostly seemed like heat and sweat and trying to escape death.”
    “That is what my uncle says about the War. He says everyone always wants to think of it as romantic and brave and daring, but mostly it was dirt and sweat and fear.”
    “The War?”
    “Yes. You know. That small war thirty-odd years ago in America…”
    “Ah, yes.” He quirked a smile. “The conflict in the colonies. Fortunately, I wasn’t in the tea business at the time.”
    Alexandra chuckled. “You take, I see, a large view of world affairs.”
    Thorpe went to his safe, unlocked it and took out two packets of soft cloth. He laid them on his desk and unwrapped the first one. On the velvet lay an old necklace. Seven separate pieces of enameled gold dangled from the circlet by separate strings of emerald beads.
    “It’s beautiful. It looks quite old.” Alexandra leaned closer.
    “It is. It’s called a satratana. Each of these sections represents a planet in the Indian astrological system.”
    “Fascinating,” Alexandra murmured. “It is such beautiful workmanship.”
    He unrolled the other cloth, revealing a necklace of startling beauty made of sapphires and diamonds, with a large sapphire pendant hanging from the center.
    “Are these from your mine?” Alexandra asked.
    Thorpe suppressed a smile. Every other woman who had seen the necklace had practically salivated over it, caressing the jewels and holding it up to her throat. He supposed it should not surprise him that Miss Ward seemed more interested in the background of the jewels.
    “Yes.” Perversely, he found himself wanting to see the jewels around her neck, though she had not asked.
    “Was this a gift to your wife?”
    “I have no wife. I intended this piece for no one,” he answered harshly, pushing aside the memory of the woman whose neck he had envisioned it on, knowing even as he did so that he would never see it.
    He began to roll the