Fortune's Mistress Read Online Free

the only way? Will you not wish me happy?”
    Tears sparkled in Olivia ’s eyes, and she could feel them rising in her own. “How can you doubt me?” her sister asked, her voice trembling. “I have ever wished, prayed, that some happiness might be yours. I have been so blessed in life! It has hurt me to my core to see you so isolated, so chained to a fate that might have been anyone’s through a moment’s folly.”
    Marianne shook her head. “I was altogether foolish.”
    “ You were trusting,” Olivia exclaimed bitterly. “Were we not raised to be biddable and sweet? To yield to whatever whims— “
    “ Do you not see?” Marianne interrupted. “It simply does not matter anymore. It is time to forget the past. And now— now I have the ability, the opportunity, indeed, the duty to do so. To leave it behind, and start two new lives.” She paused and blinked back the tears. “Perhaps,” she went on, “I can still make something good from all of this.”
    Olivia pulled her shawl more tightly about her and looked up into the sky. “You will have all my thoughts and prayers,” she whispered.
    “ And your silence?” Marianne asked. “No one must know of this.”
    Her sister attempted a smile. “Except for William. He does ask after you, you know, although you have never met. And I keep no secrets from my husband.”
    Marianne nodded silently, as she wondered for the hundre dth time what it would be to enjoy such a companionship. She did not know what the future held, but she prayed that a measure of happiness would not be forever withheld.
     

Chapter Three
     
    Marianne sat back on her knees and wiped her hands on her apron, before bracing them against the dull ache in her back. How good it was to be in a garden, to be nurturing green things! She had never before been allowed the freedom to plunge her hands into soil, and she did so these days with enthusiasm. The smell of the earth was sweet, and her heart was light.
    Even though she had been engaged in her new life less than two months, she surveyed the scene before her with satisfaction: a garden of her very own. Despite the waning summer, the flowerbeds were wild with color, pink clashing against gold against violet, like a disheveled trunk of bright silk ball gowns.
    That was wh at she liked best about this garden, she decided. Years of neglect had engendered its own beauty. Grown beyond artificial borders, it was no longer forced into any shape except that which nature intended. All evidence of patterned pathways lined with stiff rows had been erased, and she planted and pruned judiciously, respecting the wildness which held sway here. Now opening to the sunlight that arched above the rooftop, the flowers looked carelessly lovely, as if they had just arisen.
    In a way, this late summer blossoming mirrored her own state, she thought with a slight smile. It was just as well, however, that summer would soon be coming to an end. Already, the sun seemed paler in the sky than it had a month ago. Soon enough she would be unequal to such exertion as had been her custom these last weeks. A winter fireside and a pile of novels would hold a charm of their own, she was sure.
    Marianne looked fondly toward her house. Rosewood Cottage was as sweet a haven as she could have dreamt. Its rosy bricks were partially obscured by ivy, and the diamond pane windows glinted as they caught the sun. It was all her own, hers and the babe’s.
    She had stepped with very little difficulty from her old life into the new. But what diffi culty could there be, she asked herself, moving from the constraints imposed by censure to the freedom of anonymity? From being a possession, to again commanding her own destiny? Erasing a sordid past and replacing it with innocent new life?
    Despite her fears, no one in the village seemed to question the arrival of the “newly widowed” mother-to-be. Her story of a husband killed on the Peninsula was not unusual. Nor did she deny the rumor that