An Unsuitable Bride Read Online Free PDF

of the intellect. The young girls who came under her tutelage were generally the daughters of the landed gentry, for whom lay ahead only good marriages, the amusements of the Season, the long heartbreaking years of childbearing. They had little interest in the finer pursuits of the mind, although they were eager enough for dance classes, music lessons, and instruction in deportment. Alexandra Douglas was very different.
    From the first moment the fifteen-year-old girl had arrived at St. Catherine’s, Helene had known she had a potential protégée at last. Alexandra’s curiosity knew no bounds, and everything fascinated her, whether it was a mathematical equation, some finer point of agriculture, the intricacies of beekeeping, or the poems of Catullus. Helene, with sheer joy, had honed the girl’s undisciplined mind and seen her grow into the highly accomplished young woman sitting across the desk from her on this chilly December afternoon.
    And now she had to give Alexandra news that would have who knew what consequences for her future.
    Alex became increasingly uneasy as the silence stretched, until Helene said simply, “I have some bad news, my dear.” She took a sheet of parchment from her desk. “This is from your father’s lawyer in Chancery Lane. I’m very sorry to have to tell you, Alexandra, but your father has died very suddenly.”
    Alex blinked and swallowed the lump that had grown in her throat. “Papa is dead?”
    Helene nodded, pushing the letter across the desk to her. “Read for yourself, my dear.”
    Alexandra stared down at the black, lawyerly script, the seal of an inn of Chancery at the bottom. It was a simple statement of the death of Sir Arthur Douglas on the fifteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord 1762. The following paragraph merely said that there were estate matters to discuss with Sir Arthur’s daughters, and Lawyer Forsett would be happy to make the journey into Hampshire to impart these matters to Mistress Alexandra and Mistress Sylvia Douglas, unless they would care to wait upon him in his chambers in Chancery Lane.
    “I am so sorry, my dear,” Helene repeated, seeing the girl’s pallor, the sheen of tears in her eyes.
    Alexandra shook her head as if to blink the tears away. She hadn’t seen her father for five years. Every Christmas, there had been a token of some kind but never a letter or anything really personal. She had wondered at first what she and Sylvia had done to cause their father’s hostility, but as time went on, she had learned to shrug it off. Their mother’s final romantic escapade had probably been sufficient for their father to cut himself off from their shared offspring, and when news of the divorce and his remarriage had reached them in a terse note from this same lawyer, his daughters had accepted the situation. Alexandra’s upkeep and tuition at St. Catherine’s was paid for regularly, and Sylvia’s financial needs and her care under their former nurse continued uninterrupted. Alexandra had vaguely assumed that their father had made some provision for their future and ceased to question his silence.

    Until that freezing January afternoon in Lawyer Forsett’s chambers.
    Alexandra brought herself back to the reality of the present, the moonlit evening, the quiet chamber at her back, the oh so familiar surroundings of her familial home. So familiar and yet so unfamiliar now. She felt the old, cold anger begin to spiral within. She had learned painfully over the years the need to control her mercurial temper. She was a natural hothead, and it had taken many unpleasant lessons to teach her both the need and the tools to keep it on a tight rein.Injustice had always been the first trigger, and the injustice that presently tyrannized herself and her sister constantly threatened to overwhelm those hard-won controls.
    She fought her silent battle for a moment, until she felt the anger subside under the equally cold but twice as useful determination.