Valentine Read Online Free PDF Page A

take her house, her land, her tenants … everything that she held dear … everything that embodied the memory and spirit of her father and her grandfather … everything that she had worked to maintain for the last three years, since she’d taken the reins of the estate management into her own hands. The land was fertile, the tenants hardworking and content. It was hers, and he was going to take all that from her. She knew every stick, every plant, every ridge of mud on this land. She knew the tenants, their trials, their triumphs, their grievances. She knew the feckless and the industrious; she knew their children. And they knew her.
    Theo realized that she was standing at the foot of the stairs, her knuckles white against the carved newel. The hall was empty, the massive oak front door open, dust motes tossing in the broad path of sunlight. Her eye roamed the room, resting on every familiar object—the bench beside the door, where in distant memory her father would sit to have his muddy boots removed; the long Jacobean table and the burnished copper bowl full of rose petals; the deep inglenook fireplace where, during the winter, the fire was never allowed to die and guests were welcomed with warm spiced wine, where on Christmas Eve the tenants would gather.
    She uttered a short, savage execration, grabbed her gloves and whip from the table, and went back outside, striding round to the stable. The Earl of Stoneridge could go hang. She had work to do.
    There was an uneasy silence in the dining room. “She’ll come back, Mama,” Emily said with faltering confidence.
    “I trust so,” Elinor said, laying down her napkin. “Rosieshould be presented. Would one of you ensure she looks respectable?”
    She left the room, and Clarissa and Emily sighed. “Theo’s going to be difficult,” Clarissa stated. “It’s not fair on Mama.”
    “It’s not fair on any of us,” Emily asserted crossly. “I wish Edward would come back from that horrible Peninsular War and we could get married. Then you could all come and live with us and we could tell this … this
Gilbraith
to go to the devil!”
    “Emily!” exclaimed Clarissa, torn between shock and sympathy with her sister’s fervent wish.
    “Come along, Rosie. You need to change your dress,” Emily said with a return to elder-sisterly dignity. “See if you can find Theo, Clarry. She listens to you.”
    “Not always,” Clarissa said, but went off in search of her younger sister.
    Theo was nowhere to be found. The groom in the stable said she’d taken the new gelding for an airing. Full of tricks, he was, the groom said. Feeling his oats … it was to be hoped Lady Theo could hold him.
    In a contest between Theo and a raw young gelding, Clarissa would back her sister anytime—particularly in her present mood. She returned to the house to change her gown and prepare herself for the upcoming ordeal.
    Sylvester rode up the driveway of Stoneridge Manor, his nostrils flaring at the scents and sights of his ancestral home—his birthright. The lime washed, oak-timbered structure stood foursquare at the head of the crescent sweep of the drive—as it had done for three hundred years; the soft red-tiled roof glowed in the afternoon sun; the intricate diamond cuts of the mullioned windows sparkled. His eye took in the neat, well-weeded driveway, the perfectly clipped box hedges, the soft blue water of Lulworth Cove beyond the rose garden.
    His—for a price. But this afternoon he’d get an idea of how stiff the price would be. Two sisters—Lady Clarissa, and Lady Theodora. Etiquette dictated that he consider the elderfirst, and unless there was something radically at fault with Lady Clarissa, he could see no reason to disobey the dictates of convention. It was to be a marriage of interest, on his side if not on the lady’s. But the lady, thanks to her ever-loving grandfather, was not to know that.
    He was smiling as he dismounted and handed his mount into the charge of a