Love by the Morning Star Read Online Free PDF Page A

could see the crenelated heights of Starkers Castle.
    For a second, she forgot shattered glass, distant family, the terror of the last weeks and the loneliness of the past days, and surrendered to the magnificent absurdity of it all. To think that because her mother’s older sister had been married to a little man called Peregrine for a few months before she and her baby died in childbirth (
A few months only?
Hannah suddenly wondered, counting to nine and discovering possible scandal), she should have an earl’s estate as a sanctuary.
    â€œYou must accept any treatment, be prepared for any harsh words they might throw at you,” her mother had warned. “My sister was not considered a suitable match, and then, when she was dead, they didn’t approve of me moving to Germany. I had become family through marriage, you see, and they thought they should control me, for the sake of the family’s reputation. They’ve acknowledged your connection and have agreed to take you in, but don’t expect them to be kind. It will only be for a while. Whatever happens, however they treat you, you must promise to stay at Starkers until we come. I need to know you’re safe with family. Even an unloving family.”
    Hannah didn’t believe her mother’s gloomy prognostication. She stood still on the frost-browned grass at the winding roadside and knew exactly what Starkers would be like.
    â€œIt’s straight out of P. G. Wodehouse,” she said aloud, too loud, grinning for the first time in weeks.
    â€œI live in hope,” said a voice behind her. She hadn’t even heard the car, it was so quiet, a sleek black Bugatti coupe looking like a panther stretched full-spring. Inside the rolled-down window, a rakish face looked up at her. “We have the aunts, we have the valet, we even have a silver cow creamer.” He pushed his floppy, too-long chestnut hair out of his eyes. “But no matter what pains I take to set up a clever screwball comedy, my family remains steadfastly pedestrian.”
    â€œExcept for you,” Hannah said, eyeing the Bugatti.
    He laughed, the freest laugh she had ever heard. It would knock down prison walls. “No, I’m rarely a pedestrian. I imagine myself taking long woodland strolls, but like the Wodehouse, staging it never quite happens. I’m always behind a wheel or atop a horse. You must be a new one.”
    â€œRather new,” she said, blushing.
    â€œFrom Germany?”
    She nodded, reminding herself to sound English. She could, of course, but since even her mother spoke German most the time, her English tended to be accented unless she thought about it.
    â€œWe just got another one last week. Hop in­—I’ll take you to the door.”
    Hannah ran around to the other side.
    â€œYou read Wodehouse, eh? I hope this doesn’t sound too bigoted, but I never thought of a refugee maid reading . . . oh, hullo!”
    Hannah was so entranced by his poetic way of calling her a maid—for
maiden
, she assumed, another example of ever-changing English slang—that she found herself holding the car door open for the large blond woman who had just pulled up outside the gate in a second cab. Her hair was twisted into fantastic serpentines, and her very long dress was a shade away from white, just enough so that her attire suggested virginal glamour, not nursing. Her gloves, however, were pure white and immaculate. She slid into the two-seater.
    â€œThanks,” the woman said, to the driver, not to Hannah. “Oh, you’re not a chauffeur.”
    â€œLord Winkfield, at your humble service, madam.”
    â€œWinkfield?”
    â€œI know, embarrassing to no end, but what can one do? Still, ever so slightly better than Lord Liripip, what? May it be many years before I accede to my father’s title, for more reasons than one. My mother is expecting you, I believe.”
    He seemed to suddenly remember