Brenda Joyce Read Online Free Page A

noticed the torn leather or the tarnished brass of the victoria. She hadn’t noticed the excessively faded upholstery in his home, the smoke-darkened, torn wallpaper on the walls. Sir Thomas was gentry, and it had been a miracle that he would call on a mere shop girl, much less take her to wife. In many ways, Sir Thomas had saved her life. In any event, he certainly had changed it drastically.
    Of course, Sir Thomas was old enough to be Violette’s grandfather, perhaps even her great-grandfather, and this was his second marriage. His first wife had died a decade ago. But her life had changed from the moment he walked into her shop and smiled at her. He courted her, gently and respectfully. But best of all, Sir Thomas had agreed that Ralph could leave London, too, and join them as a servant of sorts.
    Sir Thomas drove the victoria down Tamrah’s single main street, keeping their gray gelding at a walk. Violette kept her chin high as several shopkeepers and pedestrians turned to look at them from the stone sidewalk. Her heart sank a little when she noticed Sir Thomas’s daughter, Joanna Feldstone, staring at her from outside the cabinet maker’s. Violette looked away from the older woman’s icy stare.
    At first, she hadn’t cared about the difference in their ages.
Not really. Marriage was a matter of convenience, a business arrangement. Everyone knew it, and she and Ralph had discussed it at length. Violette had been thrilled to accept the proposal of a gentleman who would take her away from London and the grim life she had always known. She had been thrilled to marry a knight and become Lady Violette Goodwin. Sir Thomas had suggested that she spell her name in the French fashion. Violette couldn’t spell or read, so she did not care. She had agreed.
    They had been married for six months. Violette had just turned eighteen.
    How she loved York. She loved the countryside, and she loved Goodwin Manor, but she hated this small village. It wasn’t the village itself, which was quaint, with its stone buildings and timbered roofs, flowers in the windowsill pots. It was that no one here liked her—no one, that is, except for her husband.
    And Violette knew what everyone thought. They all thought she was dirt, not good enough for Sir Thomas, and that she had married him for his money. But everyone was wrong. She had married him to better herself. She had married him to escape her grim existence.
    Now Sir Thomas stopped the victoria in front of the druggist’s, a small shop with stained-glass windows, and Violette felt her cheeks begin to bum—not that she cared what these hoighty-toity villagers thought. However, she did smooth down her magenta-colored silk dress, one overlaid with a darker red lace tissue, red roses decorating the flounced hem and the high neckline. She fingered the pearls at her neck. She tucked an escaping wisp of hair back into her dark blue velvet bonnet, which was decorated with a small bird and fruit. Then she picked up her reticule. She could not help being nervous.
    “Do what you have to do, Violette,” Sir Thomas said mildly.
    Violette smiled at him. He was very tall and very thin. Cook was always scolding him for not eating, and his face was pale except for two brilliant red spots on his cheeks. Violette, of course, ate enough for the two of them. He was close to seventy, or so Violette had heard, so of course he was very wrinkled, but his eyes were as mild as his tone had been, and they were kind. Violette had liked his eyes from the moment they had first met. “I promise to ’urry.” She stepped down from
the carriage carelessly, landing on the dirt street with a small, restrained jump.
    Her pulse accelerating now, Violette turned to glance back the way they had come. The moors stretched out into what appeared to be infinity, on the one hand bleak and inhospitable, nearly treeless; yet it was late summer now, and they were abloom with purple gorse. Sometimes it seemed to Violette that she