Love's Tangle Read Online Free Page A

none I know of.”
    “No ancestors? You have no family?” Once more, he seemed genuinely interested. His blue eyes, almost sapphire in color, were fixed on her face and she felt another uncomfortable jolt. What was he doing talking to her like this? It was unfair. She was the dairymaid and should not be mixing with a duke—or with his attractions.
    “I have no family living that I know of,” she amended.
    “Then we are in the same case.”
    Should she remind him he had a cousin and an aunt, housed just yards away? She thought not. It was as though Roland and his mother did not exist for him.
    With barely a pause, he spoke again. “Do you consider it a blessing, Nell, or a sadness? Not having a family, I mean.”
    “A sadness, Your Grace, an infinite sadness.”
    His expression softened at her words and she was emboldened to ask, “And you?”
    He looked back at the portraits once more and then gazed past them as though he would bore through the oak paneling to a world beyond. When he spoke, his tone was dull with weariness. “One cannot choose one’s family. On balance I would say it’s a blessing.”
    “Your Grace, I have the papers here.” Jarvis bustled importantly towards them. “Hannah placed them underneath the blotter, foolish girl. I will arrange for them to be dispatched to the lawyers in Brighton without delay.”
    Then, noticing that Elinor was still where she should not be, the butler made haste to excuse the lapse. “Please forgive this intrusion, Your Grace. The girl is new and does not know her way around. Leaving the servants’ hall, she inadvertently took the wrong turning.”
    Gabriel smiled faintly. “Don’t we all at some time or another?”
    He turned back towards his study and Jarvis shooed Elinor through the door into the servants’ passageway.
    ****
    As the week wore on, she began to find the work less onerous. Martha might have a sharp tongue but she was good hearted and with her help Elinor was becoming skilled enough to earn her mentor’s qualified praise.
    “I’ll give it yer. Yer may not be as fast as Letty but yer neater. And yer don’t waste time flirtin’ with them that’s above yer touch.”
    It was fortunate, Elinor reflected, that she was used to domestic work. Fortunate, too, that the girl whose job she had taken had never arrived. From a young age Nell had been given charge of the Bath household, spending her days cooking and cleaning, helping Grainne to mix paints, buy supplies and spread the word to bring in new customers for her mother’s delicately painted miniatures. She had given little thought to the future—not, that is, until that desperate January day when Grainne had returned from delivering her latest commission, soaked and shivering. There had been no money for a doctor, no money for nourishing food or even for warmth during what had been the bitterest winter for years, and a severe chill had quickly turned to pneumonia. But she must not allow herself to drown in sadness; she was here for a purpose, to carry out Grainne’s last wish.
    Her final task of the day was to load two churns of milk onto a small cart and trundle them to the kitchens. The cart was too cumbersome to use the footpath and she was forced to drag it part of the way along the main drive. As she walked, yesterday’s conversation with Martha replayed in her mind. The evidence her mother had ever been at Allingham was the flimsiest. A foreign woman, Martha had said, but how significant was that? Her mother’s Irish origin was no more than a story after all.
    And while she had leaped at the idea that the previous duke might be the man of Grainne’s dying words, the evidence for that was even flimsier. He wasn’t the only rich and powerful man to inhabit Allingham Hall, she was sure. There was the present duke’s father for a start. And there might be cousins or children of cousins. It was an enormous house and any number of people could have lived here eighteen years ago. She