Lucky Logan Finds Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

not!”
    “There is no alternative,” her stepfather said. “If you fail – well, at least we have
tried
to save the sinking ship.”
    He paused before he went on,
    “If you succeed, then I can only swear to you on everything I hold sacred – which is your mother – that I will never get myself into this sort of situation again.”
    Belinda did not answer.
    After a moment D’Arcy Rowland got up and walked across the room to the window.
    He stood as he had before, looking out into the garden and he was silhouetted against the sunshine.
    Belinda looked at his broad shoulders, dark hair and narrow hips tapering down to his long legs. She knew without his saying so that he would rather die than go to prison.
    Then it was as if she could see her mother’s face looking pleadingly at her.
    She thought that there were tears in her beautiful grey eyes.
    She
had
loved D’Arcy Rowland, loved him in a different way from how she had loved her first husband.
    D’Arcy had made her happy – so happy that her laughter had filled the house.
    One could feel the vibrations of love the moment one came in through the front door.
    ‘I have to save him,’ Belinda decided and she was not thinking of herself.
    “Very well, Step-Papa,” she said, “I will do as you suggest, but if I make a mess of it, you will know that I have tried.”
    D’Arcy Rowland turned round.
    “You
will?
You will really do it?” he asked.
    Belinda knew from the way he spoke that he had been doubtful.
    Yet, could any woman, she wondered, refuse D’Arcy Rowland anything he asked?
    He sat down on the sofa, where he had been sitting before and in a very different tone of voice from what he had used previously, he suggested,
    “Now we have to make plans and I have a feeling that everything is going to be all right.”
    “But what are we to do in the meantime about the – servants and the – bills?” Belinda stammered.
    “I was thinking about that while I was coming here,” D’Arcy Rowland replied. “I was wondering if there is not something in the house that was not included in the inventory which your father had made when he left the house and its contents to you.”
    “But – you said it is mortgaged to – the bank.”
    “I know,” he replied, “but I am sure we can find
something
. Or perhaps it would not be noticed if we pawned something, which can, of course, be redeemed the moment you give me the information I need.”
    As he spoke, he did not look at her directly and Belinda knew that was what had happened to the George III silver wine cooler.
    He had doubtless taken other objects of which she was so far not yet aware.
    She felt as if she was sinking deeper and deeper into a muddy pool.
    But it was no use now to speak of principles or honesty.
    “I am – sure you can find – something,” she said.
    At the same time she felt ashamed.

Chapter Three
    Belinda and her stepfather had a quiet and rather dismal luncheon.
    Mrs. Bates was in a flutter because she had not expected Captain Rowland to come home.
    Belinda felt that to eat anything at all would choke her.
    She was wondering all the time if she could find something anywhere in the house that her stepfather could pawn.
    She knew that Bates was hoping for an opportunity to ask him for the wages he was owed.
    She was aware that her stepfather was thinking, as she was, if there was anything valuable that would not be claimed by the bank.
    When they left the dining room, they walked into the drawing room before D’Arcy Rowland said sharply,
    “We might as well make a tour of the house. I have had a copy made of the inventory that I gave to the bank. Anything that is not on it is, of course, ours.”
    Belinda knew that when her father had had the inventory made it had been a very comprehensive one.
    She could not remember anything of value that she or her mother had bought since his death. What was more, as her mother had been away so much after her marriage to D’Arcy Rowland, it had