Patricia Rice Read Online Free PDF

stirred by a
dangerous gleam in his eye. So, she was nervous. She squeezed her
fingers against the flutter.
    She had the niggling suspicion that she might have just made a deal with the devil.
    The bright light of interest in his eyes confirmed it.

Three
    With Mr. Warwick and his children duly ensconced in
their new abode, Beatrice returned to the task at hand—finding the funds
to pay the staff. Hiring someone to haul off her modish furniture would
throw the town into spasms of despair and wouldn’t pay the bank note,
in any case. She ran her fingers lovingly over the piano keys while her
cousin waited impatiently. Selling the instrument would be the last
thing she would do.
    Digby had discreetly sold the best silverware
without asking questions. Perhaps she might disguise the disappearance
of other pieces, if only to pay the servants. “We must sell the silver
epergne, James, or at least the coffee set.” Saying the words to the
accompaniment of Mozart wasn’t quite so difficult.
    “Oh, never the epergne,” James wailed with a
dramatic flinging of his gloved hand to his forehead. “We will be
ruined, completely ruined .”
    Beatrice bit back a smile at his antics. She never
knew what role he would play next—he’d just imitated Clara Miller to a
fare-thee-well. She wished she could be as... as free to emote as James.
    The lulling melody beneath her fingers turned to a
rollicking comedy she’d heard at a Punch and Judy show. She’d never
learned to look at servants as creatures beneath her dignity. She was
curious about a cousin who insisted on working for wages. But she was
too shy to ask for more than he was willing to impart, and James dodged
delicate inquiries with the grace of a gazelle.
    Now that Nanny was gone, James was the only person
in the village to treat her like a friend. He had been the only one
audacious enough to offer her a shoulder to cry on the night her father
died. They’d wept buckets together. She couldn’t part with him despite
his absurdities.
    She supposed she must maintain some semblance of
authority. “It’s sell the epergne, or sacrifice your allowance and forgo
the pleasure of buying more gold buttons this quarter,” she said
sternly, looking up from the piano keys.
    James had designed his outrageous coat himself, and
he’d insisted on the powdered wig as well. The pretentious ensemble
might be all the rage in London, but she thought it seriously out of
place here.
    He sobered and stiffened his spine and shoulders. “You cannot possibly sell the epergne in the village. It would be a disgrace.”
    “Not to mention an impossibility,” she murmured. The
village had no jeweler or silversmith. “You will have to take it into
Cheltenham, as Digby did.”
    “Digby is old and wears black and looks the part of a
gentleman. The storekeepers would brand me a thief,” James declared.
“Besides, I simply cannot wear black,” he concluded, as if this were
argument enough. He shuddered eloquently. “I would look a carrion crow.”
    “Thank you very much,” she said dryly, glancing down at her own black bombazine.
    “Oh, but black becomes you,” James insisted. “I do envy you your coloring.”
    Well, he was the only one. Rusty hair and ghostly skin struck her as exceedingly boring, not to mention unfashionable.
    He was diverting the subject. She crossed her hands
on top of the keys with a resounding crash. “You must wear black and
look dignified and go to Cheltenham, James. We have no choice. Mr. Digby
is busy opening the inn, and I cannot impose on him anymore. You must
stand in his place.”
    James quit fussing with his buttons to look at her directly. “No, cousin, it’s time you learned to go about in the world. You cannot hide away in this
backwater forever. If you are to keep this household afloat, you must
find a husband, and it cannot be done here, unless you mean to court
that uncouth American. Selling the silver won’t