Once an Heiress Read Online Free PDF Page A

straightened. He set the miniature upright on a table. “Yes, Nessa, it’s me.”
    The woman wept softly. “I asked for you and asked for you. Where have you been?”
    His body responded to her distress with a pain in his heart. He couldn’t bear her tears. “I’m sorry, darling.” Ethan crossed the distance to the bed. “I came as soon as I could.”
    He drew the curtain aside, revealing the bed’s occupant.
    Vanessa’s long white hair lay like silvery rays of moonlight against blue pillowcases. Her skin was deeply lined and thin as vellum, showing the veins in her face and hands. Her eyes, though, were as bright and vivid as they had ever been, a rare violet that had inspired poetry and beguiled royalty on both sides of the Channel.
    Now those eyes, brimming with tears and childlike fear, turned upon him.
    Ethan lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. “I heard you argued with your nurse.”
    Vanessa thrust out her lower lip. “She hides my things, just to be mean. Today, she took my brush and wouldn’t give it back.”
    Ethan glanced at the vanity. As he knew it would be, the silver brush lay alongside the comb and hand mirror, right where they always were. “I think I see it,” he said in a patient tone. “Would you like me to get it for you?”
    “No!” Vanessa’s hand shot out and caught his. “Don’t leave me, Thorburn,” she whispered. “You’ve been spending so much time with that wife of yours, and hardly any with me. Are you … Are you tired of me?” Though her voice was reedy with age, her eyes pinned him with a ferocious intensity.
    His heart lurched. “No, my love,” he said, reciting the script that would calm her, words from a time long past. “I could never tire of you.”
    Vanessa tugged his hand. “Then come to bed.”
    Ethan sighed and stretched out beside her, on top of the coverlet. He propped up on some pillows and reached for her.
    Vanessa nuzzled into Ethan’s chest and made a contented sound. The frail woman felt insubstantial in his embrace. He rested his cheek on her forehead and kissed her brow, just to assure himself she was really there. “What shall we do this evening, Nessa?”
    “I’d like to go to a ball,” she answered on a happy sigh. “You buy me so very many pretty things. All the ladies will be jealous. Their husbands don’t do half for them what you do for me and it infuriates them. They can look down their noses at me all they like, but I see their envy. They wish they had things like mine. They wish they had a love like ours … ”
    Her voice trailed off into a mutter, and then she was quiet. She inhaled and exhaled slowly. Her weight increased against him as she sank into sleep.
    When he judged it safe to do so, he reached for the bell pull beside the bed.
    A maid opened the door and crossed the room, her eyes wary upon Vanessa.
    “Could I have something to eat, please?” Ethan asked in a whisper. “Something I can manage with one hand.”
    The maid glanced at her sleeping mistress and offered Ethan a sympathetic smile. “Of course, my lord. And may I say,” she hesitated before continuing, “God bless you, sir. The care you give Madam … ” She shook her head. “Well,” she concluded, “we’re just fortunate you don’t have bigger things on your mind.”
    She curtsied and tiptoed from the room. Ethan stared after her, stupefied.
Didn’t have bigger things on his mind?
    For the first time since he’d arrived, he remembered that when he went home, it would be to a house stripped to the bones, and creditors banging down the door.
    Ghita’s insistence that he marry once again floated through his mind. The Italian woman had even mentioned a name, to which Ethan had paid no attention. Brock-something, maybe? Marriage was repugnant to him, thanks to the twice-damned Earl of Kneath. Ethan didn’t want a bride, but gaming had driven him to ruin.
    If only he possessed a useful skill, he could seek respectable employment. Perhaps a