Read Online A Song Twice Over by Brenda Jagger - Free Book Online Page A

They could be loved, of course. They were loved.
    â€˜You won’t see me again,’ he told her.
    â€˜Well – I won’t die of that.’ But as he turned away white with anger, and strode off down the street, she felt that he had killed her already.
    She had not told him of her plight. Once he had turned the corner she would have no way of finding him. And who knew where she might be herself tomorrow?
    â€˜Daniel …’ But it was only a whisper with no hope of reaching him, spoken only to comfort herself as she leaned for a moment, feeling sick and shaken and totally desolate, against the stone wall.
    And then, slowly, deliberately, she tidied her hair, smoothed her skirts, straightened – almost an inch at a time – her suddenly aching back.
    One thing at a time. And she must steady herself now, compose herself, in order to achieve it. First her mother. Then Miss Baker. Then the landlord of the Fleece. Then somebody, somewhere – Please God – to employ her.
    But the name in her mind was Daniel.

Chapter Three
    Gemma Dallam would always remember the first time the Irish girl came to call as the day on which she made up her mind to marry Tristan Gage, her mother’s godson.
    Not an easy decision. Nor – above all – in the least romantic. But, as the threads came together in her mind, oddly natural.
    She must marry someone. She and her mother, for rather different reasons, were both agreed on that. And since she was plain, rich and, at twenty-two no longer in the first bloom of youth, being of a practical disposition and quick wit, short of stature but high in her financial expectations – a combination which made it unlikely that she would ever be courted for love – then surely, among the several who had offered, it would be better to take shallow, charming, undemanding Tristan than a man of greater substance who would exercise the right, with which marriage empowered him, to demand a very great deal.
    Better Tristan who was poor and who, having no home of his own, would be glad to remain here in the ancient, inconvenient but – to Gemma – uniquely beautiful manor house her father had purchased with the profits of his weaving sheds, rather than Ben Braithwaite, young autocrat of Braithwaite & Son, worsted manufacturers, who had inherited a tall dark house to go with his mill, complete with Braithwaite family traditions, a tribe of Braithwaite relatives to be entertained, Braithwaite interests to be first and foremost considered; even the vague malice of a widowed mother.
    Better Tristan who took little in life very seriously beyond the set of his lace cravat, the cut and quality of his jacket, than Uriah Colclough, master of Frizingley Ironworks and Non conformist lay preacher who would require her to conform, nevertheless, and most strictly, to the very letter of his moral principles.
    Tristan, who saw her fortune only in moderate terms of thoroughbred hunters and good living and would think it ill-bred to question her own expenditure, rather than Jacob Lord of Lord’s Brewery who was over-meticulous with money, or the heir to a certain local baronet who, while making her Lady Lark of Moorby Hall would also use her last penny to keep his crumbling, ancestral home intact, and to purchase for his half-dozen noble brothers, a seat in Parliament, a commission in a crack regiment, a sugar plantation in Antigua, appointments in the Foreign Service and in the English Church.
    Tristan, who did not love her but would be polite about it, who, like a cat of high and indolent pedigree would require nothing from her but a silk cushion to recline on, a prettily served quota of fresh cream, rather than all those other men who had wanted her to be a wife , to be the ‘angel’in her husband’s home, the source of his pleasure and procreation, his freshly laundered shirts and hot dinners; to submit herself absolutely to his protection and authority, having