Foul Tide's Turning Read Online Free PDF

herself and daring to make it back home alive.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Leyla Holten, striding into the house’s great entrance hall.
    Willow turned around. ‘You mean here in the hall, or here in the house?’ Given Holten was now female head of the house, Willow should have addressed the woman as Mistress , but she’d choke on the word before it crossed her lips.
    ‘You know what I mean. Don’t play the giddy goat with me, girl.’
    As much a girl as you . ‘I am waiting for the ledgers from the bank to be sent over with the morning’s paperwork. There’s a glaring discrepancy in the last corn oil shipment we sent down the railhead, and I promised the warehouse manager I’d try to ferret it out.’
    ‘Oh, that,’ said Holten, sniffing as though Willow had announced she’d lost control of her bowels during the freezing night just passed and soiled her bed. ‘They arrived early this morning. I opened the accompanying letter, read it, and sent the ledgers back to the warehouse.’
    Willow only just managed to choke back on her outrage. ‘You read my post … you did what ?’
    ‘It is not the place of a daughter of this house to sully herself with matters of common trade.’
    ‘ Sully myself?’ Willow fought to hold down her rising temper. ‘Even when my brother was here, I was the only one apart from my father to show the slightest interest in the family business. I’ve been helping him since I was old enough to read. If I’m not going to do it, then who pray tell is? You?’
    ‘We have offices filled with clerks who we pay to watch the accounts,’ said Holten, haughtily.
    ‘And just what am I meant to do?’
    ‘I have noted your predicament in that regard. I am not blind to it. I think,’ said Holten, ‘that you are of an age to be married. If we leave it any longer, people will start to talk. They will think that your time as a slave has left you somehow stained. In short, they will begin to wonder what the matter with you is.’
    ‘I seem to recall that the last time we talked about my “predicament”, you and my father almost choked at the dinner table.’
    ‘It is not the institution of marriage we object to, but your ridiculous affections for the mop-haired ruffian offspring of the local preacher. A penniless book-botherer who’s perfectly matched to his station buried in the librarian’s hold. You are the daughter of a Landor, and that vulgar young man is no match.’
    ‘And what in the world do you know about being a daughter of a Landor?’
    Holten caressed her pregnant belly, smugly. On Holten, the condition just seemed to accentuate the curves of her hourglass figure. She was no stick from the south, she had a farmer’s generous frame around her bones, it was only a northerner’s soul the woman lacked. ‘I will shortly know what it is to deliver a Landor son, girl. The doctors have promised us a new male heir.’ She ran her eyes contemptuously down Willow’s plain dress. ‘And then you will be perfectly redundant, in both matters of trade and inheritance, when it comes to the course of this house. I am merely suggesting that a well-starred exit before we reach that point will be advantageous to you.’
    ‘Not just for me, I think.’ Willow stared in hatred at this interloper who had wormed her way under her own roof. ‘I’ve been through hell. This, all of this , is nothing compared to what I survived in the empire. There’s nothing you can do to me that isn’t water off a duck’s back. Not even on your worst day. Just you understand that, Holten.’
    Leyla Holten turned around. ‘Nocks, where are you?’
    Holten’s short, stocky manservant came running like a lapdog at the sound of his owner’s commands. Nocks never failed to make Willow’s skin crawl. You would think the man was a vampire, the way he skulked around the house by day, only venturing out after dark – and then, rarely. He trotted to a halt and stared at Willow, his leer made worse by