The Wildest Heart Read Online Free Page B

down to hide their expression, had listened in silence, her face unmoved.
    At last, when his wife had collapsed into a chair with her handkerchief and vinaigrette held to her nose, Sir Edgar bellowed, “And what do you have to say for yourself now, miss?”
    Rowena raised expressionless blue eyes to his face. “What do you wish me to say?” she replied quite equably, taking him so much aback that he could do nothing but stare at her in speechless fury for a moment. He had expected tears, remorse, a quailing before his declaration of authority. Instead, the irresponsible chit with her sun-browned face had the impudence to look him in the eye quite calmly, with one eyebrow slightly raised.
    â€œBy God!” he said at last. “Have you understood nothing of what your mother and I have been saying? Do you have no conception of the upset and turmoil your outrageous behavior has caused? I tell you, miss, that you will learn some discipline while you’re under my roof! You’ll learn some polite manners, and to act like a lady! And you’ll do exactly as you’re told, by God, or…”
    â€œThere is no need to raise your voice in order to make yourself understood, sir,” Rowena retorted in her calm, cold voice, eliciting a gasp from her mother. “Indeed, I had already realized that since I was offered no other choice but to come here to live under your guardianship, I would have to accept whatever restrictions you might insist upon until I come of age. But…” and her eyes narrowed a fraction, “I see no reason to pretend, do you, that either of us is happy with the present arrangement? I do not want to be here any more than you want me here yourselves. But I suppose we’ll have to make the best of it!”
    Lady Fanny’s sobs had risen to an almost hysterical pitch, and Sir Edgar had ranted and raved even louder than before. But in the end, when Rowena had thought he came almost close to striking her, he turned and stamped out of the room, ordering his wife to have her ungrateful child sent upstairs to be made presentable.
    How calmness had the power to discompose some people! Rowena shook her hair loose, still staring into the flames, and began absentmindedly to towel her hair dry as she sorted out her impressions.
    She had not expected to like her mother, and had found her to be even sillier and too determinedly youthful than she had imagined. Poor Lady Fanny, with her gold hair too elaborately arranged for morning, and her pretty silk gown with rows of ribbon and lace at the neck in an attempt to hide the telltale wrinkles. Thank God I don’t look like her , Rowena thought, with a shudder of distaste. Sir Edgar, with his curly muttonchop whiskers and protuberant gray eyes had come closer to being the way she had pictured him.
    Sir Edgar had left the house to take refuge in his club. And Lady Fanny, declaring she had one of her terrible migraines, now lay in her darkened room with her old nurse, Mellyn, to soothe her.
    â€œYou was always a difficult child, and a trial to my poor dear baby!” Mellyn had sniffed disapprovingly at Rowena, and had then left her to the ministrations of a disapproving lady’s maid with steely eyes, who had announced that her name was Adams. And even that poker-faced female had closed her eyes in horror when she saw the crumpled cotton gown that Rowena produced so carelessly from the bottom of her battered portmanteau.
    â€œBut miss—I mean, my lady—you cannot possibly go down to luncheon wearing that—garment!”
    â€œOh? But you see, it is all I have, except for the riding habit I was wearing when I arrived here. All the rest of my clothes were packed in my trunk, and that, for all I know, may still be at Tilbury!”
    Cool as a cucumber, Adams thought angrily . Doesn’t care a fig for all the trouble she’s caused.
    Aloud she said firmly: “If you’ll give me the gown, Lady