The House of Adriano Read Online Free Page A

and again to marry him - he and Peter got on very well together, in fact he jokingly said their very names went together - but she had not been able to accept him. It was not that she disliked him, in fact very much to the contrary, but her feelings went no further than liking.
    It would work out, she always said when anyone mentioned the matter. She did not know in what way, but it would work out. And if she was one of those girls destined by fate never to marry, then she would still have Peter. Quite naturally, since she was as normal as any other girl, she had hoped that she would marry some day, and there had always been the thought at the back of her mind that the man she loved and who loved her - when and if such an unknown arrived on the scene - would not be able to help loving Peter as well.
    Sharp at five o’clock Aileen hurried out to catch .the tram that would take her to Bronte, the suburb on the sea where she had her little flat. It was right up high and overlooked, far down below, the crescent-shaped little beach with its golden sand, the green of the park and the tall pines in it. Further away, near the beach roadway, palm trees waved feathery fronds in the breeze.
    Actually she was very lucky in that near to her flat there was a special school for working mothers. Attached to it was a nursery that was open from eight in the morning to six at night. Children could be left there before school started, when at the correct time they would all be shepherded into the big grey stone school next door. When school finished the two maiden ladies who ran the nursery would collect their charges and keep them there until their mothers could come and take charge.
    It could not have worked out better for Aileen. She was able to leave Peter there on her way to work, knowing that he was in good, safe hands. Since they were both happy and comfortable in their little flat and could go down to the beach over the week-ends there should have been no reason for anything ever to change it, unless of course she got married. The charges at the nursery were reasonable and she was well able to support Peter and herself. She was good at her work and Jenton paid her a correspondingly good salary.
    When she reached the nursery, Peter was at the gate waiting for her and, as always, started dancing with excitement. He did not rush out to meet her because the catch was placed too high for the younger children to reach, so that they could never run out into the road, and in any case was of a type that was rather complicated even if some of the older ones did manage to reach it.
    Today something was different. As she looked at him she could not help noticing that fleeting resemblance. The resemblance to Duarte Adriano, Conde de Marindos. Peter was an Adriano, however much Eric might have renounced his family. She remembered Mandy once looking at Eric with a whimsical smile and remarking that genetics was a funny thing when two redheads like Eric and herself should have produced a black-haired little Adriano - and Eric’s immediate retort that Peter was no Adriano, he was a Balgare. But even Eric had not been able to deny that, even though he had the Balgare red hair, his features had been the aquiline ones of the Adriano family, and blue Irish eyes in that dark face had somehow heightened rather than detracted from the family resemblance he wished to deny.
    Peter was wholly Adriano in looks and, even though he was only seven years old and his little body had all the chubby sturdiness of young boyhood, it was already beginning to take on some hint of an inherited, natural pride. It would become more developed as he grew older, and she realised now that Eric had possessed it too. They were both members of the house of Adriano, however much that aristocratic family might have renounced them. Even Duarte Adriano would have had to recognise the beginning of that proud heritage in Peter as a reflection of his own n atural, proud poise.
    She went into