Dare to Love Read Online Free PDF

willing to sacrifice all for love.

IV
    I did not go to Land’s End the next afternoon. I wanted to. With all my heart, I wanted to see Brence Stephens again, but I knew that it would be a mistake, that it could lead to nothing. He probably hadn’t shown up himself, I reasoned. After he talked with his cousin and learned of my background, he had probably shrugged his shoulders and put me out of his mind. I was trying to put him out of mine. It wasn’t easy. I was strangely discontented in a way I had never been before.
    I forced Fanny to take her medicine and to stay in bed while I did the necessary housework. I tried to read George Sand’s new novel, but it was all about love and, much as I admired her work, I found the emotional passages much too disturbing. Two days passed, and on the morning of the third day after the encounter on the road, John Chapman came to see me. Fanny showed him into the drawing room and creaked slowly up to my bedroom to announce his presence.
    â€œI’ll be down shortly,” I told her. “Offer him a glass of sherry.”
    Fanny nodded, coughed, and left the room. Putting away my book, I removed the blue cotton dress I was wearing, folded it up and set it aside, in no hurry to join my guest. He could wait. It would be good for him. John Chapman wasn’t used to waiting. Wearing only my petticoat, I sat down at the dressing table and began to brush my hair. When I was finished, I lingered in front of the mirror for a moment, examining myself with critical eyes.
    I wished that I were beautiful, but that I would never be. Beauty meant delicate features and clear blue eyes and soft blond curls. My hair was the color of a raven’s wing, tumbling to my shoulders in dark waves that gleamed with blue-black highlights. My eyes were a satisfying deep sapphire blue, but my cheekbones were too high, my mouth too full. The girls at the academy had called me “The Spaniard,” teasing me about my rich coloring. They had teased me about my figure, too. It wasn’t proper for a respectable young woman to have such a slender waist, such voluptuous curves.
    The dress I slipped into showed off those curves to advantage. It was a pale violet silk printed with tiny dark blue and pink flowers. Aunt Meg had delighted in buying me clothes, and I possessed an extensive wardrobe, with dresses far more sophisticated than those ordinarily worn by girls my age. The violet silk had short puffed sleeves, and the low-cut bodice emphasized my bosom. It was tight at the waist, and the long skirt was very full.
    Stepping back from the mirror, I turned this way and that, studying the effect of the dress. I was pleased with what I saw. I might not be a demure English beauty, but I had something that men seemed to find much more intriguing than mere beauty. Brence Stephens had been aware of it immediately, and John Chapman was aware of it, too, acutely aware. This intangible quality was as yet untested, but I sensed that it was a valuable asset, a weapon to be discreetly employed in the struggles ahead.
    I had never been concerned about my looks the whole time I was growing up. I had thought only of dancing, working for hours on end, consumed by an ambition that left room for nothing else. A change had taken place in me, and with it had come a new wisdom, something I knew must be instinctive with every woman. I didn’t welcome it. I fervently wished I could return to being an innocent schoolgirl, but I had grown up. Aunt Meg’s death had awakened me to the grim realities of life, and the meeting with Brence Stephens had awakened something else, something I had sensed fleetingly in the past but never fully realized until I looked into those dark, knowing brown eyes.
    I was a bit nervous as I started downstairs to the drawing room, for I was going to have to handle John Chapman very carefully. He had agreed to give me six weeks before turning me out, and I needed that time. I had to