With This Ring Read Online Free Page A

D'Arboishad not set out to offer poor women a way off the streets.
    W i t h
    R i n g
    Faced with genteel poverty, they had both been too busy saving themselves from careers as governesses to worry about saving others. But once they were safely launched in their new professions, fate and Beatrice's upbringing as a vicar's daughter had intervened.
    The first young girl, bleeding from a miscarriage, had arrived at the back door of Lucy's new dress shop a month after it opened. Beatrice and Lucy had carried her upstairs to the cramped quarters they shared. When it had become certain that the girl would survive, they had concocted a scheme to find her a new profession.
    The ticket to a better life was a fake French accent. The plan to remodel the young prostitute into a French lady's maid had worked so well that The Academy had been born.
    Five years had passed since that fateful night. Beatrice now had her own small town house. Lucy, who had become the more financially successful of the pair with her outrageously priced gowns, had married a wealthy fabric merchant who valued her business talents. She had moved into a fine new house in an expensive neighborhood, but she continued to operate her dressmaking salon as Madame D'Arbois.
    Beatrice and Lucy had converted their old quarters above the dress shop into a schoolroom and hired a tutor to teach rudimentary French to desperate young women.
    Occasionally they lost one of their students back to the streets. Beatrice's spirits were always down for a while after such incidents. Lucy, far more practical about such matters, took the philosophical approach. You cannot save everyone.
    Beatrice knew her friend was right; nevertheless, she was, at heart, a vicar's daughter. It was not easy for her to accept the failures.
    Sally studied the gloomy stone walls of the chamber. "Do ye think this place is haunted like the innkeeper's wife said?"'
     
    A m a n d a
    "No, I do not," Beatrice said firmly. "But I do have the impression that his lordship's staff rather enjoys their master's bizarre reputation."
    Sally shuddered. "The Mad Monks o'Monkcrest. Gives one the shivers, nest-ce pas?"
    Beatrice grimaced. "Do not tell me that you actually believe some of the tales the innkeeper's wife told us last night."
    "Fit to give a person nightmares, they were. All that talk of wolves and sorcery and 'orrible events in the night."
    "It was all rubbish.'
    "Then why did ye let her carry on until nearly midnight?" Sally retorted.
    "I thought it was an amusing way to pass the time." Sally knew nothing of the real purpose behind the frantic trip into the wilds of Devon. As far as she was concerned, Beatrice had come to see the Earl of Monkcrest on obscure family business. Which was actually no more than the truth, Beatrice thought.
    "From the sound of 'im, he could have walked straight out of one of Mrs. York's novels." Another shudder sent a tremor through Sally's full bosom. "Quel mysterious, nest-ce pas? Strikes me as just the sort of gentry cove what lives in moldering ruins and sleeps in crypts and never comes out in the daylight."
    Beatrice was surprised. "Do you mean to tell me that you read Mrs. York's novels?"
    "Well, I don't read too good meself," Sally admitted. "But there's always someone around who can read 'em aloud to the rest of us. I like the bits with the ghosts and the bloody fingers beckonin' in the dark passageways best."
    "I see."
    "We're all lookin'forward to Mrs. York's new one, The Castle of Shadows. Rose says 'er mistress bought a copy. As soon as the lady's finished readin'it, Rose is going to borrow it and read it to us."
    W i t h T h i s R i n g
    "I had no notion that you were interested in horrid novels." A small, familiar rush of pleasure went through her. "I shall be happy to lend. you my copy of The Castle of Shadows."
    Sally's eyes widened with delight. "That's very nice of ye, Mrs. Poole. We'll all be ever so grateful."
    Not as gratefW as I am, Beatrice thought.
    It always