Somebody To Love Read Online Free PDF

brushed by a warm feather.
    “Well! Is he interested in you?”
    She laughed. “Perhaps as target practice.”
    Olivia’s uneven thumping stopped again. Her eyes widened. “What can you mean?”
    Araminta opened the clay butter holder and scooped several spoonfuls into the pan. “At our previous meetings, he was terribly rude. He did not answer my ‘pleased to meet you.’ Ha, he didn’t even bother to smile or nod. I greeted him and he stared at me as if I were a—a talking dog or something. No, it was worse. He stared right through me.”
    Araminta considered telling Olivia about the strange meeting the night before. Better not, for she knew the girl had no defenses against Kane, and she didn’t want any reports getting back to him. She opened the glass jar of flour and continued, “And today. I went to speak to him and, uh, rather lost my temper.”
    As she stirred the sauce, she told Olivia all that she’d blurted out at Griffin.
    Olivia gasped. She put her hands over her mouth and began to laugh. “Truly, you couldn’t have.”
    “I did.”
    Olivia, still laughing, shook her head. “Araminta. What were you thinking?”
    “I wasn’t, obviously.”
    “Oh, I could never speak to anyone, certainly not a man, in such a manner. I have to admire your strength.”
    Araminta wrinkled her nose as she recalled the tirade she’d directed at Calverson. “Strength? You mean bad manners.”
    Olivia giggled, but then the smile faded from her face and she gave a few hard whacks with the knife. “Perhaps, but if I have learned anything in the last year, it is that in some situations, it is best not to beve like a lady.”
    “Not so difficult for me, for I was never one to begin with.”
    “Oh, pray stop, Araminta. You are as much a lady as any woman I know. You have . . . presence.”
    Araminta gave her a smile. “Thank you. I shall have to remember that word. Presence. So much more impressive than shrewishness.”
    They both laughed.
    Araminta stirred the thickening flour and butter as she added cream. “So your troubles began a year ago?”
    Olivia’s smile disappeared. “Forgive me,” she said softly. And Araminta knew that she meant she wouldn’t say anything else. The girl refused to discuss anything about her past.
    “Fine, fine. I shan’t bother you about it.” Araminta shook her spoon at Olivia, who ducked her head with a slight smile.
    After she finished with the parsley, Olivia left to “go for a nap,” she said, but Araminta saw the pinched, haunted look in her face. She looked unhappy or even ill, not tired. For a few minutes Araminta considered what this could mean, until the pace of work picked up and her thoughts turned to preparing the day’s meal.
    As usual, when she threw herself into cooking, she could forget anything else. Only occasionally was she tweaked by the memory of Calverson. The image of his face, his body reclining in the chair as he examined her, or his strong, limber hands would flash into her mind.
     
    Every few weeks, the Park Avenue mansion lay silent and closed up for twenty-four hours. On those quiet days she did not have off, Araminta caught up with the bills and orders or experimented with new recipes or created dishes that would not spoil to be used the next day.
    One of those mornings, Araminta went to Kane’s, glad for the quiet. Still chafing at the memory of their peculiar encounter, she’d awoken that morning thinking of Griffin, knowing he must have haunted her sleep again.
    She mixed and kneaded dough for some loaves of bread, and then she checked the supplies to make a list for the next week’s menus. Alice, the younger scullery maid, stood at the basin, scrubbing out the last of the servants’ breakfast dishes. Every now and again, Alice twisted sideways to stare out the kitchen door into the garden. Plainly the girl longed to be outside.
    Araminta put down her pencil and stood up. “Leave it, Alice, and trot round to the Miltie’s pushcart and see