The Wedding Affair Read Online Free Page A

kill me .

Two
    The silence in the small garden beside the cottage was disturbed only by the occasional cluck and scratch of one of the neighbor’s chickens, the sharp cries of children as they chased an escaped pig through a nearby courtyard, and the scrape of Olivia’s hoe as she loosened dirt around a hill of runner beans. She almost didn’t hear the squeak of leather as a rider shifted in his saddle in the road just outside her garden wall.
    Kate looked up from the patch nearby where she was thinning a row of carrots. “There’s Sir Jasper riding past again.”
    Every muscle in Olivia’s body tightened.
    Sir Jasper’s nasal voice rang out. “My lady, and Miss Blakely. I see you are both well occupied today in raising vegetables. What an interesting hobby you have.”
    “We manage to amuse ourselves.” Olivia kept her voice light.
    He bowed, tipping his hat with an ironic flourish, and rode on.
    Kate pushed herself back from the carrots. “I don’t understand that man. I’m really starting to think he cherishes a tendre for you, since he can’t seem to go half a day without passing by the cottage. Yet when he sees you outside, he never makes a push to do anything more than pause for a moment’s conversation.”
    I should have told her right away , Olivia thought. But on the day that Sir Jasper had made his proposition, Kate had been absorbed by the invitation to Lady Daphne’s wedding and had not noticed that Olivia was quieter than usual. At any rate, Sir Jasper’s offer had been so insulting that Olivia herself had scarcely believed what she was hearing. She’d been afraid that Kate—not having heard the conversation firsthand—might think Olivia had imagined the whole thing or misunderstood Sir Jasper’s intentions.
    But whether it had been wise to keep her own counsel or not, Olivia had stayed silent then. To tell Kate now, more than three weeks after the incident, would be even more difficult.
    Three weeks in which she had made little headway toward solving her problem.
    She had managed to eke out the rent payment that was truly due, though only by squeezing the household budget till it squealed in pain. But if Sir Jasper insisted on doubling the rent as he’d threatened, Olivia would come up short once again. She had quietly looked around the village for another house, but there was none to be found in Steadham. She had no resources to go somewhere else, and even if she could afford the fare to travel, there was no one whom she could ask to take her in.
    In any case, she couldn’t simply pick up her daughter and leave. She felt responsible for Nurse as well, and Maggie the housemaid, and now even Kate.
    “I’m not sure we’ll ever make you a gardener, Olivia,” Kate said gently.
    Olivia looked down at the hill of runner beans, chopped off at ground level and already wilting under the warm sun. “I let my mind wander, and my hoe must have slipped.”
    A childish soprano chimed in, “I will dig, Miss Kate!”
    Olivia looked across to where Charlotte was standing on a bench in the grape arbor that nestled against the garden wall, plucking the lowest-hanging fruit from the vines. The little girl looked a bit like a grape herself with her hands and her round cheeks smeared with sticky bluish-purple juice. After eating her fill, she had gathered up the hem of her pinafore in one small hand, forming a makeshift basket to hold the extra fruit. Juice from the grapes she’d smashed dripped through the fabric, down her skirt, and onto her tiny shoes.
    Olivia winced at the idea of trying to get juice stains out of Charlotte’s yellow muslin dress and decided it might be easier to fix a pail of juice and dye the entire thing purple. Or whatever color grape juice would end up becoming if mixed with yellow muslin. Kate would know.
    Or perhaps Olivia wouldn’t bother, for the dress—though still wide enough to fit Charlotte’s slender body—was already too short. Her baby was rapidly growing up;