Seduction In Silk: A Novel of the Malloren World (Malloran) Read Online Free PDF

picked up another rabbit skin. “She’d never do that, dearie. Too many bad husbands out there.”
    Claris took down a pottery vase from a shelf and went to the water bucket to fill it. “Exactly, and if there are potential good husbands in the world, I don’t see them around here.”
    “Young Farmer Barnett has an eye on you.”
    Claris laughed. “If he were so foolish, his mother and grandmother would tie him up, like Odysseus tied to the mast to resist the allure of the siren.”
    Ellie chuckled with her. “They’d try, wouldn’t they, the prating fools, but he’s a young man with a mind of his own, and with his father dead he’s master there.”
    Claris put the vase in the middle of the table and filled it with sweet peas. The perfume fought the smell of Ellie’s work but was losing.
    Gideon Barnett a suitor?
    He was a sturdy man and they were of an age. The Barnetts were regular churchgoers, so they’d met on Sundays and feast days all their lives, but no more than that. Her father had never wanted to mix with others, and her mother had refused to mingle with what she’d called the lesser ones—the villagers and farmers.
    She realized Farmer Barnett had called at the cottage now and then. Athena provided a cream to help his grandmother’s joints and when someone came for it they always brought something from the farm in gratitude. In the past few months, however, it had been Farmer Barnett himself, and last time the gift had been a good-sized piece of choice pork.
    A courting gift?
    “Barnett has his pick of the young women for miles around,” she said, “and thank heavens. I don’t want to have to reject him. Shall I wash the vegetables now? If not, I’ll hoe around the beans. This warm weather suits the weeds too well.”
    “You do that, dearie. I’ve finished these and I want to wash the floors now Athena’s not in and out. But wear your hat or you’ll never rid yourself of those freckles.”
    Claris laughed. “I’ve had them all my life, but very well.” She put on her wide-brimmed straw hat before going out to vent her emotions on groundsel and chickweed.
    Then she wondered,
What emotions?
    Panic?
    Over the mere mention of marriage?
    Or over the idea of leaving here?
    She glanced back at the cottage. It was the end one of a terrace of four, all of which sagged to the right—that was, to Lavender Cottage. The windows were tiny. The small panes had glass in them, but it was a thick, rough glass that distorted the view.
    The thatch roof that covered all the cottages needed repairs, but Squire Callway, their landlord, was ignoring requests. She didn’t know the state of the other cottages, but hers had damp patches in the upstairs bedrooms.
    Everyone pitied them for having to live here after growing up in the rectory, but Claris had been ecstatic to escape. Despite the cottage’s damp and drafts, which had made the winter hard, she didn’t want to leave.
    She was safe here, and if Athena left, so be it. She could manage on her own.

Chapter 4
     
    P erry approached a terrace of four small cottages, skeptical that one housed Miss Claris Mallow, daughter of the Reverend Henry Mallow, once a friend of Giles Perriam. On arrival in Old Barford, he’d left his horse at the inn and gone to the rectory, which was a handsome house that couldn’t be more than forty years old. There he’d learned that Mallow was a year dead and that his family was living at Lavender Cottage.
    Sometimes “cottage” was applied to a small house of some style and dignity, and that’s what he’d expected. This row lacked both, but the end one on the left was fronted by lavender plants, so that must be his destination. The modern rectory lay only a hundred yards away as the crow flies, but it was a hundred miles away in all other respects. Henry Mallow hadn’t provided well for his family, but that could be to his own advantage.
    If the family was impoverished, Miss Mallow would be eager to wed. In fact, he’d be