Love's Fortune Read Online Free PDF Page B

your room?”
    Mumbling an apology, Wren followed on the heels of a maid, Papa and Grandmother close behind. The feminine bower that was to be hers was little more than a blur of pale purple, window curtains cast about in a wildly unsettled breeze.
    A mantel clock chimed as the door closed after them. Two in the afternoon? Wren was midnight weary. Molly was missing, unable to help her with her dress. Unmindful of her lemonade-stained skirts and the corset that pinched her with unrelenting fury, she fell facedown on the bed and went to sleep.

5
    Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.
    W ILLIAM P ENN
    Hours later, Wren awoke in a strange bed but had little memory of how she’d gotten there. Somehow, in the sleepy, humid hours following their arrival, Molly had divested Wren of her soiled dress. Now clad in a cotton nightgown, Wren roused, skin damp from the room’s sultriness. The cobwebs in her head were gone, the clumsy mishap of the afternoon forgotten. An open window nearest a corner fireplace lured her with its teasing breeze. She leaned into the deep sill, ears taut. A mockingbird’s song rent the air—and then a cry.
    She hadn’t been dreaming. Someone was weeping. She feared it was Molly. Molly couldn’t speak but she could cry. Was she missing Kentucky too?
    Slipping out the door, Wren padded down the stairs, intent on the veranda. Andra had corrected her when she’d said porch , as if the word was too plain. Shivers puckered herbare skin at the thought of meeting up with her very proper aunt, but not a soul was in sight. The big house was more kindly without her tonight.
    Beneath her feet the floorboards were smooth, the wet mess she’d made earlier set to rights. It took a few minutes to get her bearings, but once at the edge of the garden, she felt for the latch on the ornate gate. Its answering creak set her teeth on edge.
    The weeping she’d heard had given way to cricket calls and the low cooing of a dove. For several moments Wren sorted out shadows. Farther down the bricked path she spied a slim silhouette hunched over on a bench. Not Molly. Bennett’s bride-to-be? Befuddled, she couldn’t recall the woman’s name. She’d been easily overlooked in the haze of Wren’s arrival.
    Should she intrude? Speak? Wren took a careful step, and the woman snapped to attention, clearly startled.
    “Please—it’s only me. Wren.”
    The full moon shone down, bright as a lantern, calling out the alarm in the woman’s expression. “Bennett’s cousin?” Despite the heat, the bride wore an elaborate dressing gown, slippers on her feet. “I thought you were called Rowena.”
    “I’m not sure what I’m to be called.” Mindful of Andra’s dislike of a simple Wren , she trod cautiously . “You’re welcome to use either.”
    “You seem more a stranger here than a Ballantyne.”
    Did she? Looking down, Wren smoothed her wrinkled nightgown, almost ashamed of its plainness. “I hardly know my kin. We rarely come upriver from Kentucky. You’re from Boston?” Isn’t that what Grandfather had said? Something about a Boston shipping heiress? “I don’t recollect your name.”
    “I’m Charlotte Ashburton of Boston, yes.”
    “You’re a long ways from home, then, same as me.” Feeling a twist of sympathy, Wren sought some common ground. “You must miss it.”
    “I do miss Boston, everything about it.” The hushed words were almost swallowed by the splashing of a near fountain. “Pittsburgh is so dark. All that coal dust. The pastor who’s to marry us says they’ll have to wrap me in a sheet to get me to the church or my wedding gown will be blackened.”
    Wren drew in a sultry breath of honeysuckle as if to clear her mind of the memory. The pall of the city was all too easy to recall. “Why not marry right here in the garden?”
    “I’d hoped to wed in New Hope’s chapel.” Charlotte gestured beyond a yew hedge to a stone wall. “But Bennett says it’s too small.