You Only Love Twice Read Online Free PDF Page A

did most of the talking. Adrian watched Lucas and was not surprised when after only a few sips from his cup, he pushed back his chair and rose.
    “I’ll see you back at the house,” he said.
    Adrian reached for a buttered roll and said casually, “You’re making a mistake.”
    “That’s a matter of opinion.”
    Perry said, “But where are you going?”
    “To take care of some unfinished business,” said Lucas.

CHAPTER
3
    J essica Hayward . She paused to savor the sound of her name, then went back to kneading the dough for the day’s bread. She still found it hard to believe. She didn’t feel like a stray anymore. She was a real person, Jessica Hayward, and she’d come home.
    Not that Hawkshill Manor belonged to her. It had been sold to Lord Dundas to pay off her father’s debts. That was one thing that had come as a great disappointment to her. She had no living relatives. She still didn’t know what had taken her to London.
    The sudden sting of tears took her by surprise. It was stupid, of course, but she’d hoped.… She blinked them away. So she was an orphan, just like their boys. It couldn’t possibly matter to her, because she couldn’t remember her parents. But it did matter. Before Mrs. Marshal, the woman at the infirmary who had recognized her, had filled in the blanks, she’d begun to weave fantasies about her family. She’d imagined her homecoming. She would be like the prodigal son returning from a far countryand her parents would throw a party in her honor. She would be surrounded by her brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts, and there would be great rejoicing throughout the land. Then she’d learned that she had no living relatives. Her mother had died when she, Jessica, was an infant and her father not long before she’d turned up at the convent.
    So much for her fantasies.
    She shook her head. She should be grateful just to be here. And now that she was home, she would meet people who had known her from before. Then she would have the answers to all the questions that teemed inside her head. And now that she was in familiar surroundings, maybe her memory would start to come back to her.
    She stopped kneading, and glanced around the kitchen. If only she could remember … Impatient with herself, she went back to kneading her dough. The important thing now was the work she and the sisters had to do, and Hawkshill Manor was ideal for their purposes.
    Manor was too grand a word for this dilapidated redbrick building. One could tell that Hawkshill had once been a working farm, but that was before it had fallen into decay. And a working farm it would become again if the Sisters of Charity had anything to do with it. It was a dream the mother superior had long cherished—to train the older boys in the orphanage for a trade, and everything had fallen out, so she’d said, as though it had been ordained.
    Ordained . Jessica couldn’t help smiling. All that meant was that when Father Howie had made inquiries on her behalf, he’d discovered that Hawkshill had lain empty for three years and could be rented for a song. So not only could Jessica return to her home with the sisters to keep an eye on her, but the mother superior’s dream could be realized as well.
    The landlord obviously had no interest in the place. His house was only a mile along the road and could beseen from their attic windows but, according to the attorney, Lord Dundas had no use for Hawkshill’s buildings and had bought the property because its acreage adjoined his own estate. This being the case, there was a good chance his lordship could be persuaded to waive the rent if he thought it was in a good cause. Lord Dundas was known to be a very generous man.
    And so here they were, the advance party, she and Sisters Dolores and Elvira, along with old Joseph, the burly former pugilist turned convent doorman who was now their watchdog. It was their job to get Hawkshill ready before their boys arrived. She