The Wildest Heart Read Online Free Page A

so far met in England make me repeat the questions I ask?”
    The young woman pulled the bowler hat impatiently off her head as she spoke, and her hair, which had been untidily stuffed beneath it came tumbling over her shoulders.
    â€œThis is Sir Edgar Cardon’s residence when he is in London, miss, but I do not think…”
    â€œGood.” She cut him off impatiently. “Then the directions I received were correct, after all. If you will see that my horse is taken around to the stables and fed, I think I can manage to carry my portmanteau inside myself.”
    The clear voice held an imperious ring that made Briggs’s eyes bulge.
    â€œYour—horse?” he repeated faintly.
    â€œCertainly. Did you imagine I walked here? I took a carriage as far as I could, and then, because I found I was running out of money, I rented a horse to bring me the rest of the way. I promised he would be returned tomorrow. Sir Edgar does keep a stable, I hope?”
    The horse, a sorry-looking nag, stood with its reins carelessly looped over the polished railings.
    â€œSir Edgar…” Awful suspicions were beginning to flit through Briggs’s mind. Surely this shabby-looking young person could not be one of his master’s flirts? What was he expected to do about her?
    It was with unutterable relief that Briggs suddenly caught sight of Constable Parsons sauntering up, his eyes curious under his shiny helmet. “Any trouble here, Mr. Briggs?” The girl turned her arrogant blue gaze on the florid-faced policeman.
    â€œCertainly not. I am Rowena Dangerfield, and I am here because my mother and my stepfather insisted I must come.”
    â€œYou could have knocked me over with a feather!” Briggs reported with relish later on. “There she stood, giving orders as cool as you please, and you should have seen Parsons’s face when she said who she was! Come all the way from Tilbury, she had. And rode all the way through town on a horse—by herself!”
    Adams took up the story. “My lady’s still lying in her bed with a headache, and Mrs. Mellyn’s with her. Prostrated she is, poor thing, and small wonder! Fancy having her own daughter, whom she hasn’t seen in years, walk in like that, with never a word sent in advance to say she was coming! No baggage—she’d left it all on the dock. Just that shabby little bag with only a change of clothes. And she just up and walked away from those kind people that took charge of her and brought her all the way from India. I heard her say, as cool as a cucumber, that she did not like them and could not stand another moment of their company!”
    â€œWonder how she’ll get on here. Ooh… I expect Sir Edgar was in a fine rage! I could hear his shouting all the way to the scullery, I could.” Mary’s mouth was as round as her eyes, and Mrs. Jenks gave her a crushing look. “That’s as it may be, but the doings upstairs are none of our concern, and you’d be wise to remember that, my girl!”
    Subdued, Mary relapsed into silence, although she longed to hear what Mrs. Jenks and that snooty Adams had begun to talk about in low, hushed tones.
    Strangely enough, the calmest and most self-possessed person in the whole household was the subject of all the heated discussion that swirled both above- and belowstairs that afternoon.
    Her dripping wet hair still wrapped in a towel, Rowena Dangerfield sat before a small fire in the room that had been given to her, a book on her lap. But she was not reading. Her narrowed eyes gazed into the orange and blue flames as her mind went over the confrontation she had had with her mother and stepfather earlier.
    It had been an angry scene, with Lady Fanny weeping that she had disgraced them all, and Sir Edgar, red in the face, shouting that she had better learn at the very start that she would no longer do exactly as she pleased.
    Rowena, her eyes demurely cast