The Impossible Ward Read Online Free PDF

the drawing room for coffee and port. Justin broached the subject of his visit, addressing his conversation entirely to Mr. O’Doyle. Now the wretched girl decided to enter the discussion. In a voice in which Justin thought he detected a touch of bravado, she said:
    “I have already told Grandpere of your mother’s kind invitation and he agrees with me that it will not do. I am needed on the farm and Grandpere is not well enough to be left alone. Perhaps at some other...”
    “Marianne!”
    At the gentle rebuke in Mr. O’Doyle’s voice the girl’s hands became very still on the coffeepot. A faint hint of color appeared in her cheeks and she kept her eyes down. Justin waited.
    “I shall miss you very much, my child, but I feel strongly that you should at least sample the life your father’s position entitles you to lead before making any great renunciation. Clara will take good care of me and there is nothing wrong with my health except that I am no longer a young man.”
    Justin had leaned forward unconsciously and he caught his breath at the full impact of misery in the girl’s overbright eyes as she raised them imploringly to her grandfather’s face. She said nothing, merely pleading with those huge dark eyes. The old man swallowed with difficulty. His elderly, rather angelic face mirrored his deep love, but his voice was quietly insistent.
    “You must go, my child. Give it a fair chance.”
    She rose to her feet then, clasping her hands tightly in front of her. “Very well, Grandpere. I will do as you wish. If you will excuse me, Lord Lunswick, I ... I have a slight headache. With your permission, Grandpere, I’ll retire.”
    Despite his basic hostility toward the girl, Justin was moved to compassion by the husky note in her voice and the memory of the naked misery he would not have credited to such an apparently cold-natured girl. Now as she bent to kiss her grandfather good-night, he strolled to the door and opened it for her. She kept her eyes averted as the silk whispered its way across the room, but he prevented her from slipping quickly out by extending his hand and wishing her good night. After an instant’s hesitation she placed her hand rather reluctantly in his and said stonily, “Good night, my lord.”
    When her eyes met his, Justin received his second shock in as many minutes, not so much at the excess of antipathy contained therein, but at the astonishing evidence that the eyes he had assumed brown or even black in the shaded glare of the sunset and across a large dimly lit table, were, in actual fact, a deep intense blue with a hint of purple in their depths. What’s more, they were set in a veritable forest of thick black lashes. If it had not been for their antagonistic expression he would have had no hesitation in declaring them supremely beautiful. He stood almost hypnotized, unaware that his grip on her hand had tightened involuntarily until she pulled hers away abruptly and disappeared up the stairs. She did not glance back at the man staring after her with a thoughtful frown causing a line to deepen between his brows.
    Only when she was well out of sight did he turn to rejoin his host in the drawing room, and only then did he allow an expression of mild triumph to reign.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    But the cold clear light of dawn brought second thoughts concerning the appropriateness of any triumphal war dances, no matter how privately observed. He must have been suffering a temporary mental aberration if the petty triumph of overriding that unlikable girl’s objections could have seemed like a victory. What kind of victory saddled him with an unwilling, uncivil, unappealing house-guest for an indefinite period of time? As he let Mountain amble his sure-footed way down the shaded lane he had noticed the previous day, he was preoccupied with his troublesome thoughts to the exclusion of any real appreciation of the clean cool air and dew-bedecked plants. What had he taken upon his shoulders