For Her Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

but she knew that he was looking at her. She should dismiss him. She should turn her back and go inside, but she could not tear herself away. He must have said something that pleased her father, for they began to move back toward the boats, and Edmund’s step was a little lighter.
    Despite her best intentions, she could not help but wonder whether Captain Courtney was what she thought him. Then she sighed heavily. If only she were what he thought her, but she was not.
     
    *
     
    An hour later, Grace sat in a straight-backed, upholstered chair in the keeping room of her home, pushing aside her embroidery frame and trying to untangle the knotted mass of threads that sat on her lap. Matu stood by watching. Iolanthe, seated in a matching chair, carefully pulled a strand from her own neatly organized skeins of thread while studiously ignoring the girl. The only hint that she was aware of Grace’s presence was her smug sneer when Grace sighed in frustration.
    Many plantation owners lived in homes that were scarcely more than huts, so a house with several bedrooms and such a fine, large keeping room as this was a luxury. The chamber was dominated by a large dining table of polished mahogany surrounded by wooden chairs, but it also contained several upholstered chairs for sitting and a small table for tea.
    Still, how Grace wished that they had a huge English manor house with several such rooms! Then she could entirely escape Iolanthe. Perfect Iolanthe, with her impeccably smooth hair and her flawless embroidery stitches and her carefully wound skeins of thread. A tendril of unruly curls tickled Grace’s cheek, and both her stitches and her cache of thread were hopelessly tangled. Of course, she thought with satisfaction, Iolanthe did have one terribly unattractive flaw.
    With her rough, dark hands, Matu took up the threads and carefully began plucking them apart, and Grace looked up into her smiling face. The older woman shook her head, her eyebrows raised in such a manner as to clearly convey the message, “‘Tis your own fault these are such a mess.”
    “Oh, Matu, ‘tis such a waste of time. ‘Tisn’t even sewing. I’m not making anything, just ornamenting it.”
    “I should not think you would understand,” Iolanthe interrupted, and as she spoke, she was forced to reveal her rotting, brown teeth. “Needlework is an art form. Of course, you lack the refinement—the breeding —to appreciate it.”
    Grace turned to her stepmother, the gleam of battle in her eyes. “It seems to me that all the fancy stitching in the world does nothing if the garment itself is inferior. Just as breeding means nothing if a person’s character is flawed. Great beauty may hide such decay.”
    Before Iolanthe could retaliate, Edmund walked through the front door. Ordinarily, this would not have stopped her from making some nasty remark in return, but Edmund’s body was tense, and his green eyes seemed about to burn a hole through his daughter. His wife swallowed her retort, reaching instead for a bowl of sugared almonds sitting on the tea table and watching with avid interest.
    “Is there a storm brewing?” she asked him. Her brown eyes were round and innocent, but there was a catty quality to the gleam in them.
    Edmund hardly spared her a glance. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed upon his daughter. “All the man wanted was permission to call upon you. He wasn’t asking for your hand.”
    Edmund’s glare turned Grace’s insides into jelly, but she kept her voice even and replied, “I thought that was the ultimate goal of calling upon a woman, the idea of asking for her hand.”
    “Would that be so terrible?” he asked.
    Grace looked up at her maid, but Matu only gestured to Edmund and nodded her agreement. Grace rose, knocking her frame and fabric to the floor, where she left them. “You both know very well how futile all this is. And I am especially disappointed in you, Matu.”
    Iolanthe gave a dramatic sigh and set her own