When Angels Fall Read Online Free PDF Page A

stared right at them, frowning.
    Harry turned back to Evvie. “Me mum thinks to get it from the gentry. They’ll pay a quid—and more—for oranges.”
    “But not us, I’m afraid.” Lissa reluctantly pried her gaze from the pyramid of oranges. With trepidation, she watched Harry’s mother rise from her seat.
    “Anything else for you, ladies?” Harry had seen his mother coming. When Lissa put in her order for a dozen baking apples, Harry’s mother grudgingly resumed her seat.
    “Here you go, Miss Alcester.” As he brought themtheir apples, he leaned over the wooden counter to drop them in Lissa’s basket. But as he did so, he left one apple out. With sleight of hand, he pulled an orange from the front of the pyramid and immediately replaced the hole with the apple. The costly orange then dropped into their basket.
    Lissa started to thank the kindly man, but she immediately silenced herself, for his elderly mother was already stomping to the front. She was sure Mrs. McBain hadn’t seen the orange go into her basket. However, Harry’s mother had long ago made it clear she didn’t want her son to fraternize any longer than necessary with the Alcester girls. And she supposed that was exactly what Mrs. McBain was thinking now.
    Her suspicions proved all too correct. As they left, Lissa overheard Mrs. McBain whisper to her irritated son, “They haven’t a quid more than we do, and besides, you know what
her
mother did!”
    The “her” in question had to be herself, Lissa knew, for much to the townspeople’s chagrin, she had grown to look shockingly like her late mother. She was grateful that Evvie had somehow been kept out of the gossip, probably because of her affliction, and also because her quiet, disarming beauty put everyone in a respectful mood. But she herself had had no such luck.
    Though Lissa always kept to herself, her looks alone seemed to bring out the worst kind of suspicions in people. It pained her every time she was likened to Rebecca Alcester. While she had loved her mother and hated to see her memory so despised, Lissa knew only too well that she had never really known Rebecca. Her mother’s life had been parties and London and ballgowns, not her children. Despite this, Lissa had adored her; adored her as she would an angel who, from time to time, would descend upon her daughter’s dull little life and make it sparkle if only for a day. Rebecca Alcester had been too glorious to touch, too ethereal to hold. Her father, William Alcester,had ultimately been the one to pay the price for loving such a creature.
    Now no remaining Alcester was ever going to be allowed to forget their mother’s chronic infidelities, particularly Lissa, who had turned out even more fatally beautiful than her mother. That was why Lissa did without, saved every tuppence she could, so that one day they would be able to get away from picturesque little Nodding Knoll. Every day the town choked her just a little bit more, and she ached for the day they could afford to move.
    Wishing away Mrs. McBain’s words, Lissa pictured again the imaginary little town where the Alcesters would make a new start. She then looked at Evvie, praying all the while that her sister hadn’t heard the old woman’s parting words. But there was no such hope. Evvie’s face had turned pinched as it often did when someone said something cruel and there was nothing she could do about it.
    But Lissa’s spirits sagged only for a moment. She looked behind her. As Harry kept an ear on his mother’s admonitions, he turned to her and gave her a saucy wink. Harry McBain had a weakness for the ladies, but he still made her feel much better and she renewed her pace with much more vigor.
    “Come, Evvie, Bishop’s Mercantile next. Let’s see what Great-aunt Sophie has for us this month. Then we’ll come back and buy all of those wretched oranges!”
    Evvie gratefully kept up with her sister’s steps.
    Lissa loved Bishop’s Mercantile. The tiny little