The Wildest Heart Read Online Free PDF

the house and read, if I will not be in the way, of course.”
    â€œWell, I—I just don’t know!” Lady Fanny shrugged helplessly, looking at Jenks for support. The austere housekeeper merely pursed her thin lips. What was she expected to say?
    Later she told Adams, “False meekness, that’s what it was! And Lady Fanny far too kindhearted to see through her. Mourning indeed! If you ask me, that young woman hasn’t enough feeling in her to mourn for anyone. Cold-hearted—you can see it a mile off!”
    It became the consensus of opinion belowstairs, as the days passed. Lady Rowena Dangerfield was a cold-hearted, arrogant little creature, even though she dressed plainly and dowdily.
    â€œLike one of them popish nuns, dressed all in black, and wearin’ those ugly bonnets with thick veils that she chose herself,” the under-footman said.
    â€œMore like a Salvation Army lady!” Alice giggled.
    â€œAh, but she’s got all the haughty airs and graces of a grand lady, even though she’s got no money of her own—nothing! I heard the master say the Earl of Melchester owned nothing but his title—spent everything he earned living in grand style out in India. Left her nothing but a few pounds, and she soon spent that, didn’t she?”
    Adams and Jenks exchanged significant looks. Neither of them liked Rowena, who persisted in giving them orders in exactly the same tone she used to the other servants. “She’ll get her comeuppance one of these days, just you mark my words!” Briggs said, determined not to be left out of the conversation. “I can tell the master’s getting tired of having her moping around the house.” He lowered his voice, so that the parlormaids, sitting at the other end of the long kitchen table, would not hear him. “The other night when the Wilkinsons from Yorkshire came for dinner—you mind when the gentlemen retired to the library for their port?”
    Adams sniffed.
    â€œ She said she had a headache and went upstairs to bed. It made my lady terribly upset, I can tell you!”
    Alice, who was allowed to wait on table occasionally, chimed in pertly. “I can tell you what they were talking about at dinner! Mr. Thomas was asking her about India, and she hardly answered him, except to use all kinds of big words I’d never heard of before, and about the Hindu religion being older and wiser than any other, and…” her eyes widened, “the Wilkinsons are chapel !”
    They were all struck dumb by this shocking pronouncement, except for Briggs, who shook his head in grim disapprobation.
    â€œThat’s what comes of being brought up in a land of heathens! But I have a feeling Lady Rowena will be brought to heel yet. Sir Edgar’s too clever not to see through her, and I can tell you, in the strictest confidence of course,” here he frowned at Alice and the giggling Mary, “that he has plans !”
    Even Cook looked up from her knitting.
    â€œDo tell, Mr. Briggs!”
    â€œHeard him talking to Mr. Wilkinson senior. And the young Mr. Wilkinson, from the way he sat there grinning, didn’t seem to mind what he was suggesting too much. Lady Rowena has a title, and Sir Edgar isn’t a man to be stingy with his money. Offered a dowry to go with her, he did. And it’s my prediction there’ll be wedding bells before long, and Lady Airs-and-Graces, like it or not, will be packed off to Yorkshire with a husband!”

The Journals of Rowena Elaine Dangerfield
1873–1876

Part I:
The Marble Goddess

One
    I sit at my window looking out at the hot sunlight reflecting off the sunbaked, pink brick of my patio, and try to imagine myself back in London, and eighteen years old again. Somehow I find that calling up the distant past is less painful than recalling events that happened only a few months ago.
    Suddenly I have a compulsion to write—to chronicle everything