To Tempt a Saint Read Online Free PDF Page A

that she had long ago atoned for any vanity or folly she had committed in those three dizzying years of her girlhood when she had believed herself untouchable by misfortune.
    Her mother’s death in childbirth had faded to a gentle sorrow by the time Cleo made her come-out. By then she had been so used to looking out for herself and Charlie with help from their childhood nurse, Miss Hester Britt, that she had not imagined needing any particular parental guidance in London. She had not imagined that her father would fall down a flight of stairs at a brothel and break his neck. She had not imagined that he had signed away his children’s care to a half brother more interested in their money than their welfare. Nor had she imagined the power of a piece of paper to limit her freedom and her brother’s.
    What if Sir Alexander Jones had taken her up on her outlandish proposal and simply transferred his plans to her? Would she have said yes? She shivered at the thought. Once again she had to reflect on her great fall. No use recalling those seasons full of proposals from charming, half-sincere young men to whom she had said “no,” believing eligible suitors would always be as plentiful as chestnuts in the fall.
    If she had accepted one of those young men, however flawed her marriage might have been, she and her fortune would never have been under her uncle’s control. And she had to admit that any of them would have been better than the husband Uncle March had chosen for her.
    But those suitors were gone. Today she had all but proposed marriage to a hard-eyed stranger about whom she knew nothing except that he was willing to marry a complete ninny for money. Jones had had an unfortunate effect on her. She could only explain it as desperation for money. It was utter folly to reveal the amount of her fortune to a stranger. She was lucky Evershot had interrupted their conversation. With Jones out of the room, Cleo had recovered her sanity. She didn’t think Franklin had persisted in his dangerous kite experiments, either, or he would have been burned to a cinder.
    Sir Alexander Jones had obviously come to his senses as well about Miss Finsbury, so he was unlikely to make another hasty proposal, especially to a ragged girl with straw on her skirts.
    At the turning in the lane, she could see a light coming from the barn, which meant that Charlie was at his chores. Another few steps and Charlie’s setter Bess raced to greet Cleo with a cheerful bark and much tail wagging. Cleo stopped to rub the silky head.
    Then Charlie appeared with a pail of milk. Cleo’s empty stomach made a desperate rumble. She watched her brother lurch toward her with the heavy bucket, making a thin shadow in the light from the barn door.
    “What kept you? I worried some.”
    “Not too much, I hope. I’ve brought you a present, a real treasure.” Cleo showed him the thin roll of draftsman’s paper she had carefully protected on the stage.
    “And didn’t eat, I suppose?”
    “I wasn’t hungry.”
    “Liar.”
    “Till now, of course.” She peeked into the pail. “Bless Agnes for giving us all that lovely milk. What shall we do with it?” She slipped her arm into Charlie’s free one and tugged him toward the kitchen, trying not to notice that he’d done his chores in his one good shirt and pair of breeches.
    “Well, if we had some eggs and flour and sugar and cinnamon, we could have a pudding.”
    “And if we had some potatoes?”
    “We could boil and mash them.” He said it dreamily. Potatoes were the main course of the imaginary feasts with which they planned to celebrate their return to Woford Abbey, now leased to a tenant. They would bake them with cream, brown them in roast drippings, and whip them into buttery mounds.
    Cleo hefted her reticule. “We do have potatoes. Thanks to Davies. He gave me a half dozen this morning and I’ve lugged them about London all day.”
    “Potatoes? Seriously?”
    “Seriously. Let’s put the pot