Lost Love Found Read Online Free PDF Page A

Velvet is again with child. Four sons, Valentina! God’s foot, I hope to prove as good a breeder as she has been,” Anne finished a trifle breathlessly.
    “You already have, have you not, Anne?” said Valentina softly.
    Anne blushed becomingly, then grinned. “But I shall not know until next spring whether it is a son or a daughter that I carry. Oh, Val! Do you think I was wrong in yielding to Robert’s pleas? We have waited so long, and he can be most persuasive,” she said dreamily. “Oh, I am so happy!”
    “What is done is done, Anne. I cannot judge you, for I have not the right to do so,” said Valentina. “You will be wed in a few days, and if the baby comes early , it will not be the first baby that has come early to a marriage. It will be a welcome child, early or not, for it has been conceived in love. I think, perhaps, that is more important than proprieties.”
    Anne hugged her sister again. “I do love you, Valentina!” she said, “and it will be a wonderful wedding, won’t it? You are, as always, correct, elder sister. The people I love the best, our dear family, will be here to share the happiness of that most joyful of days with Robert and me. Once more I beg your pardon, Valentina, for my unkindness. I am, as you have so wisely pointed out, most fortunate to be marrying the man I love. I can but imagine how dreadful it would be to have to wed someone you did not love!” She shuddered delicately.
    Valentina laughed. “No, no, Anne. While I did not love Ned, we were content in our short time together. It was not all that awful, I swear it.”
    “I hope not! I couldn’t bear the thought of you being unhappy, Val,” Anne cried.
    Unhappy . No, she had not truly been unhappy, Valentina mused during the next few days. Contentment was a good word to describe her marriage to Edward Barrows. She had been content. But nothing more.
    It still surprised her to realize that there had been almost nothing between Ned and herself. Directly following his death, she had managed to convince herself that, given time, she might have come to love him. Now with Edward buried for three weeks—the same amount of time they had been married—she knew she would never have loved him. Been fond of him and cared for him, aye. But it would never have amounted to more.
    She was grateful that, even in her shock over Ned’s death, she had had the presence of mind to instruct the bailiff in the running of the estate during her absence. Later, perhaps, she might send her brother, Payton, to oversee the property for her.
    Their vast and scattered family began arriving for Anne’s wedding. Their Aunt de Marisco, Skye, would bear most of the guests, for many were her children and grandchildren. Up from Devon came Captain Murrough O’Flaherty with his pretty wife, Joan, and their six children. The family had teased Murrough for years over the size of his family, pretending amazement that he had any children at all, considering that most of his time was spent at sea. Murrough, his skin wind-bronzed, his blue eyes crinkled at the corners from years of squinting into the sun, bore their jibes good-naturedly. He insisted that his brood of three sons and three daughters proved that, when he was at home, he spent his time there to his best advantage.
    Willow, the lovely Countess of Alcester and Skye O’Malley de Marisco’s eldest daughter, reached Queen’s Malvern in a convoy of five coaches, with a dozen outriders. They thundered up the graveled drive with great importance.
    “Thank God she is not staying here.” Lord Bliss laughed when his sister reported the arrival. “Why must Willow travel with so great and ostentatious a party?”
    “She and James will not ride with the children,” said Skye, “not that they are all that young any longer, but they are a rambunctious and noisy brood. It astounds me that my prim and proper, oh-so-English daughter should have mothered such offspring.”
    “Like their grandmother,”