No Other Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

less on her own, free to do as she wished.
    Therefore, she spent most of her time riding about the countryside, meeting the people who lived there. From childhood, Nicola had always felt at ease among the servants and tenants of her father’s estate. Her mother had usually been feeling too “invalidish” to spend much time with an active youngster, and Nicola had received the bulk of her love from their nurse and had returned it with all the enthusiasm of her nature. Her “family” had grown over the years to include most of the other servants, from the lowliest groom or upstairs maid all the way to the imposing figure of Cook, who ruled the kitchen with an iron hand.
    It was Cook who had inspired her interest in herbs, explaining to her the properties of each herb or spice she put into the food, while Nicola sat on a high stool beside her, watching with great interest. It was the healing properties of the herbs that most appealed to Nicola, and before long Cook was teaching her to grow herbs in a garden, as well as identify and pick them in the wild. She had learned how to dry them, mix them, how to make tinctures and salves and folk remedies of all sorts. Nicola had broadened her knowledge as she grew older by reading and experimenting, and by the time she was fourteen, she was called upon to cure this illness or that almost as much as Cook herself.
    It had cost her a good many tears to leave behind the servants when they moved to Buckminster. However, once there, she quickly began making friends wherever she went.
    The only problem in her new existence came in the form of the Earl of Exmoor. As the only other member of the aristocracy in the area, he was invariably present on any social occasion, and given the looser restrictions of country life, Nicola, though only seventeen, was usually often included in those events, as well. She was undeniably the belle of the area, sought after by the vicar’s pimply son, down from Oxford, as well as the Squire’s son and his frequently visiting friends. She didn’t mind such boys and their usually awkward attempts at flirtations. The Earl was another matter altogether. Mature and sophisticated, he courted her with all the smoothness of an accomplished rake. Without appearing in any way overbold in the eyes of her mother or Lady Buckminster or any of the older ladies present, he managed to find numerous opportunities to touch her in some way, and he talked to her in a low, silky way, with unmistakable gazes of passion, that both irritated and alarmed Nicola.
    She had no interest in the man. However, to her mother, as to most of the world, he seemed a marvelous catch. “Goodness, Nicola,” she responded when Nicola protested her inviting him on some outing, “I would think you would be flattered by his attentions. He is quite a catch, you know. Splendid family, the Montfords—wealth, a title. Why, you’re even friends with his cousin—what is that mousy little girl’s name?”
    “Penelope,” Nicola replied through gritted teeth. “And she’s not mousy, merely quiet. Yes, I like Penelope, and her grandmother, too, but that has no bearing on how I feel about Exmoor. I don’t like him. I don’t like the way he looks at me or talks to me.”
    “Oh, my dear,” her mother replied with a chuckle. “You’re simply too used to callow youths.”
    “Well, I prefer callow youths to an old man!” Nicola flared.
    “Really, Nicola, the way you talk…The Earl isn’t old. He’s in the prime of his life.”
    “He must be close to forty! And I am only seventeen, in case you have forgotten.”
    “Please, dear, there is no need for you to be rude,” Lady Falcourt said with a martyred sigh. “He is in his late thirties, but that’s scarcely too old to marry. Many men are quite a bit older than their wives. Your father, for instance, was sixteen years older than I.”
    Nicola bit her lip to hold back the sharp retort that sprang to them. It had been clear to everyone that