Seeking Celeste Read Online Free PDF

after the storm had come peace and a quiet resignation.
    That was, until the moment of her meeting with Lord Edgemere. Anne pushed the thought of his handsome, woefully beguiling form from her mind. He had overset both her sense and senses quite sufficiently already! It was time for the dull lady of caution to reemerge.
    â€œI am dull, Tom, but thanks for your confidence in me! Now, children, I intend retiring to bed before the candles have quite burned in their sockets.”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œNo?” Anne allowed surprise to register somewhat disapprovingly in her tone. Truth was, she was enjoying the scamps. They offered a welcome respite from the gloom of her prospects.
    â€œNo! Not before you promise Robert you shall not take me to Miss Parson’s Seminary tomorrow.”
    If the situation hadn’t been so absurd, Anne would have chuckled.
    â€œI assure you, Kitty, even if I begged to escort you there, his lordship will not countenance such a thing.”
    â€œBut ...”
    â€œNo buts! He assured me so himself, only this afternoon!” Anne squirmed to think of the earl’s sweeping denunciation of her fitness to escort the young Miss Carmichael. Pay her her fee indeed! Over her dead body would she accept a single brass farthing from his top-lofty lordship. She was good enough, it seemed, to dally with. Not so to escort his flesh and blood. The truth smarted more than she cared to admit.
    â€œBut that is famous, Miss Derringer!”
    â€œBeg pardon?” Anne was out of kilter with the children’s exuberance.
    â€œYou shall stay and be our governess instead.” Kitty’s tone was decidedly firm for a young lady of her tender years. Anne was as much touched by this as she was by the fact that the duo were obviously yearning for something more than the lot Lord Edgemere had so obviously designated them.
    â€œKitty, Tom ... I fear that is out of the question. In truth, I must tell you that I am an impostor in this household, for whoever his lordship was expecting, it was not me!”
    Four sparkling eyes turned happily upon her.
    â€œAn impostor! I knew she couldn’t be Robert’s choice! Miss Derringer, you will not credit how stuffy he can be at times.”
    â€œNever mind that, Tom! Tell us ... oh, tell us, dear Miss Derringer, how you came to pretend to be my travelling companion!”
    â€œPretend ... good grief, children, I am not so depraved as all that! I never pretended a thing. Your brother, however, persists in labouring under a misapprehension, and every time I try to set the record straight ...”
    â€œ... he refuses to listen. How very like Robert! Tom! We shall tease him mercilessly over this!”
    Anne was horrified. “You shall do no such thing. I forbid it!”
    The children looked at her with renewed interest. Miss Derringer was not to be trifled with, then. Somehow, they liked her the more for it.
    â€œVery well, but you will not be such a ... a ... mawworm as to refuse to tell us your story. Nothing exciting ever happens to us.”
    Anne might have pointed out that it was useless, then, to apply to her, for her life could be described as disappointingly uneventful. Truth, however, compelled her to hold her tongue. Lord Edgemere may be described as handsome, annoying, charming, distressingly overbearing, but never, never, never dull. Again, her colour rose as she remembered certain interesting elements of their discourse ...
    â€œKitty! I hope you do not mean to tell me that ‘mawworm’ forms part of your every day vocabulary?” Attack, of course, was the best means of defense.
    Kitty grinned. “Oh, my language can be delightfully varied! But bother that ... tell us your story before we die from curiosity!”
    Anne sighed. She supposed it would do no harm to give Miss Kitty Carmichael and her brother, the little Viscount Tukebury, a carefully expurgated account of the day’s occurrences.
    They