The Headmistress of Rosemere Read Online Free PDF

’Twould be one of those days.
    With determined steps, she went to the window and pulled back the brocade fabric in one sweep. Silver brightness reached to the corners of the chamber, reviving the space and soliciting protests from her mother.
    “Patience! What are you doing? Close those coverings at once.”
    “It’s time to rise. We’ve much to do today.”
    “I am not well.” Her thin voice was muffled beneath the pile of quilts and coverlets. “Let me be.”
    Patience ignored her mother’s tone, refusing to allow her to continue on in such a fashion. “Mother, you must.” With a quick scan of the room, she noted she was not the first to try to wake her. It had been Mary, no doubt, who had left a tray of tea on the writing desk, the steam still curling from the tiny pot. She poured her mother a cup and took it to her. “Drink this.”
    With a tsk , her mother pushed her hand away. “Do you not hear me? I am unwell.”
    Patience swallowed the resentment swelling within her—the response had become their daily ritual. “You must at least try to get up.”
    “Why?” Her mother sat up in a huff, her graying hair hanging limply about her face from beneath her sleeping cap. “Why should I?”
    Patience returned the rejected tea to the tray and moved to the wardrobe. She was so weary of the same conversation day after day. “I will give you twenty-nine sound reasons why you must get up, and they are all downstairs, waiting to learn.” Patience pulled a black muslin mourning dress and stays from the wardrobe and held them in front of her.
    Her mother only huffed. “That was your father’s vision, not mine.”
    “Well then, that leaves us with one option, does it not?” Patience slipped the dress over her arm and returned to the bed. “We should close the school. But seeing that you and I have nowhere else to go, and we rely on the school’s income to live on month after month, we would have no choice but to move to the poor house.”
    “How can you be so unfeeling?” Tears filled her mother’s eyes, and Patience immediately regretted her bluntness. But how long could she continue to allow her mother to stay in bed, swathed in her misery, refusing to live her life?
    Patience sat next to her mother on the bed, set the gown and stays aside, and took her mother’s hand in hers. “No words could describe how much I miss Father. But he would want us to move forward and continue the work he started. It would break his heart to see you in such despair. Please, you must try.”
    Patience reached for a linen handkerchief on the small rosewood table next to the bed. “You need to get out of bed. Let’s godownstairs for breakfast today. Louisa has been struggling with her French. Perhaps you could spend time with her. It might brighten your spirits.”
    “I do wish Rawdon would return. What could possibly be keeping him from us?”
    Patience drew a sharp breath and demonstrated control over every muscle in her face to keep from showing her frustration. Rawdon. Always Rawdon .
    Her mother’s refusal to accept that her brother had abandoned them offended Patience. How could her mother not see what he had done? And yet, day after day, she spoke of him as if his return were imminent.
    Patience, too, had anticipated his return—initially. But it had become clear that he had no such plans. This meant the responsibilities of running the school fell to her. How she wanted to remind her mother of this detail. The memory of Rawdon’s departure was enough to ignite Patience’s own temper.
    But Patience kept her opinion of Rawdon to herself—her mother would never hear it. “Rawdon has been gone for six months. We have heard from him only twice. I think you should prepare yourself for the fact that—”
    “Don’t you dare!” Her mother’s voice shook with sudden intensity. The older woman’s pale eyes narrowed and filled with tears. “He will soon return and set all to right. You shall see.”
    He will set