Miss Merton's Last Hope Read Online Free PDF

Merton.”
    “Good day, Mr. George.”
    Valentine showed him to the door with a steady pressure to his back. It was hard to ignore the feeling he was being forcibly removed from the house. He supposed he deserved it, since he had been sticking his nose into Merton family secrets. He collected his hat, gloves and damp towel.
    “Do you wish to speak to me about your interest in my sister?” Valentine asked once they were out of earshot and the front door stood open.
    Walter turned. “I don’t have any interest in her.”
    “Then remember the sisters rule still applies to mine and keep a distance,” Valentine warned. “I don’t wish her reputation ruined and the pair of you miserable.”
    The door shut in his face slowly and Walter stood there a moment in shock.
    Good God, had the world gone mad? He wasn’t interested in Melanie Merton in that way. She’d tolerated his questions today because her guard had been lowered by other events, but things would return to normal. Tomorrow she would ignore his existence. There was nothing of which he was more certain.

Four

    Melanie slept beyond her usual rising hour the next day. She felt drained of all feeling but strangely better about her life. She hadn’t dreamed; not one nightmare about Andy to wake her in a cold sweat while others slept peacefully.
    She had told her brother everything that she remembered about the day their governess had died. The coldness of Andy’s skin, the scent and stillness of her quarters, her anguish over the loss of the servant who had mothered her every day of her life.
    Her heart had grown lighter as they’d spoken and when she glanced across her room to the marks on the old wood-framed door, notations of how tall she’d grown each summer, the longing for Andy had faded to regret.
    Like so many small comforts, the marking of her height each summer had stopped with Andy’s death.
    Mother and Father had immediately replaced Andy with a stern spinster who’d never shown her any affection. Melanie had been forced to smile even with her broken heart, and soon enough she’d learned not to react to the pain of Andy’s loss.
    But she had never forgotten the love she’d had wrenched away so suddenly.
    After Andy’s death, her parents had insisted her toys be packed away and, at Mother’s insistence, Melanie had concentrated on learning how to run a home from then till now. She’d been thirteen when she’d played hostess at her first dinner party for the chancellor of Oxford in the place of her absent mother. She’d been so anxious about the seating arrangements she’d made herself ill.
    Valentine had wept over what she’d endured in Andy’s room and made her promise not to tease him about it later.
    She would never tease him. Not when he held her future in his hands. He alone had the final say on when and if she had to return to their parents’ cold home. When she was there, her nightmares, memories of Andy’s passing, were strongest and worst.
    She uncurled herself from her bed and began to dress, knowing the maid would most likely be with Julia at this hour. When she was presentable, she stepped out into the hall in search of her breakfast.
    She paused at the top of the stairs when she heard Julia groan. Since Julia had married her brother, Melanie had discovered sounds of that nature could occur for any number of reasons. She just hoped Julia wasn’t stuck half in, half out of a window again.
    After determining the sound had indeed come from her brother’s bedchamber, a room the newlywed pair now shared, she reconsidered investigating. At this time of day, her brother should already be out at his shop, but it never hurt to be cautious. The pair often enjoyed a leisurely affectionate farewell most mornings, or a test of strength that involved a great deal of huffing and puffing. She’d peeked into their bedchamber once to her own peril, to find Julia pinning her brother down, and then she’d kissed him so passionately that