Dorothy Eden Read Online Free PDF Page B

But she had enough sense to cut the piece out and slip it into her reticule. It could be produced if the genuineness of her application was doubted.
    She had to confess to some perhaps malicious interest in seeing Blane’s wife at close quarters, and more than a little interest in the child, with his reputed famous likeness to the portrait in Mallow Hall.
    She had brushed her hair smoothly back from her round young forehead, and arranged it in a cluster of curls at the back. She preferred not to wear the demure forward-falling curls that were in fashion, but to display her ears and the clear line of her cheek. This made her look a little older and more responsible, she thought with satisfaction. Her face, looking so serious now in the little upturned mirror on the dressing-table, had no great beauty. Aunt Adelaide had repeatedly told her her charm lay in animation, and then, trying to cope with Sarah’s high spirits, had requested a little less animation. But her eyes, wide apart, and of a curious smoky blue, were most distinctive, Aunt Adelaide conceded. A little less colour in her cheeks would have been desirable, but at least she would not have need to resort secretly to the rouge box.
    Sarah herself wished she did not. look quite so robustly healthy, for all her slim waist and narrow shoulders. It was so much more fashionable to be pale and languid. She could have wished, too, for more regular features and the stateliness that her sisters, Amelia and Charlotte, possessed. However, in spite of all this, Ambrose had fallen in love with her. Dear Ambrose. She would achieve the required stateliness when she became Lady Mallow.
    From her modest wardrobe she took her bottle-green merino day dress, and wore over it the grey felt cloak trimmed with black velvet that could not be more suitable and discreet. Her black velvet bonnet with green silk ribbons completed this picture of respectability. She looked at her reflection and sighed. She dearly loved pretty clothes. The prospect of perhaps several months of this drabness was infinitely depressing.
    She was putting on her gloves when Aunt Adelaide bustled in to say that Ambrose was downstairs.
    ‘He means to see that you carry out this mad scheme,’ she said.
    ‘Did he think I would lose my courage already?’
    ‘I don’t know what he thought, but what I think is that you’ve both lost your senses.’
    ‘You don’t really, Aunt Adelaide. You approve of us fighting for our rights.’
    ‘But not in an underhand way.’
    ‘What other way is there? We must use our enemy’s own weapons.’
    Aunt Adelaide sighed deeply.
    ‘Then here’s one of them. The reference I’ve perjured myself to write for you.’
    Ambrose, waiting downstairs, was full of excitement. He had been down to the docks and contacted the captain of a schooner to sail in two days’ time for Trinidad and other West Indian ports. He could have a passage if he wished, and the captain promised him a journey that might be completely dull and uneventful, or full of the drama of hurricanes, becalmings or even attack by pirates.
    ‘But, Ambrose!’ Sarah cried in alarm, ‘is there danger? Then must you go? What use will either Mallow Hall or a title be to you if you lie at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea?’
    Ambrose laughed, gratified by her dismay.
    ‘The fellow was only showing off. Of course there’s no danger. Or what there is,’ his face hardened, ‘if Blane could face it at sixteen I can do the same at twenty-six.’
    ‘You’re to sail so soon!’
    Ambrose tilted her chin.
    ‘In two days you yourself will be on the way to Mallow. Now tell me, are you ready? You haven’t lost courage?’
    ‘Only for you, and the thought of those hurricanes.’
    Ambrose laughed gently.
    ‘Would you like me to come part of the way with you in the cab? It wouldn’t be wise for me to go all the way.’
    ‘No. I shall go alone.’
    ‘Remember, you must succeed.’
    Sarah met his gaze levelly. She didn’t think