Read Online Elisabeth Fairchild by Valentine's Change of Heart - Free Book Online Page A

contain his own laughter. Handsome blue eyes sparkled. Dimples carved his cheeks. His amusement contagious, Felicity could not contain her giggles. Their laughter was echoed by Mrs. Olive’s plaintive cry of, “What did she say? Pray tell, what is so funny?”
    Elaine smiled. She was not made of stone. She did not care for students dubbing their governesses with nicknames, and so she refrained from laughing outright.
    Felicity noticed. She stopped giggling.
    “I called poor Miss Deering, my Deering,” she explained to Mrs. Olive before rushing to profess, “I meant no disrespect, Miss Deering.”
    “Of course you would not,” Elaine said quietly.
    “What’s that?” Mrs. Olive sounded affronted. “Did you call her a coarse widnot?”
    That set Felicity to giggling again, coarse widnot that she was.
    Her father smiled and turning to Mrs. Olive said quite distinctly, “Of crows she widnot.”
    Even Mrs. Olive laughed heartily at that. And Elaine in her window seat could not resist joining in. How good it felt to laugh. How unexpected to sit in a bedchamber with his lordship’s unexpectedly merry gaze meeting hers as his daughter chuckled and chortled and made herself silly.
    Felicity patted the counterpane beside her as she came out of a giggling fit. “Come, Miss Deering,” she coaxed.
    Elaine shook her head. “I prefer to sit here if you do not mind.”
    Valentine Wharton gave his daughter’s shoulder a squeeze and said with a knowing glance, “You must allow Miss Deering freedom to choose for herself where she would sit, Felicity, and as much as we found amusement in your temporary lapse of memory, I would prefer that you addressed your governess by her correct name in future.”
    “Yes, papa.” Felicity nodded, head down, all laughter stilled, shoulders bowed, as if with the faintest of reprimand he managed to cow her completely. What a pity.
    His lordship eyed his daughter over the edge of the book, as if at a loss, as if he would say something and yet he seemed unable to find the words. He rubbed at his brow before settling the book firmly in his lap.
    “There once was a village in Wales, the villagers of which lived their every day and night in mortal fear.”
    A quick glance at Elaine, no more than a flicker of eye contact--long enough for Felicity to ask, “What did they fear?”
    “The Widnot,” he said.
    Felicity pounced on the book. “You made that up.”
    “Right there.” He pointed, a teasing light in his eyes.
    “What’s a Widnot?” She did not sound convinced, and yet there was laughter in her voice. A good sign.
    His lordship cupped the top of his daughter’s head in the well of his hand, a gentle gesture that tugged at Elaine’s heartstrings, the more so because the child did not appear entirely comfortable with her father’s touch. He gave Felicity’s locks an affectionate tweak, a move that won him a wary look.
    “You are not afraid, are you, that I would read to you of Widnots?”
    Felicity shrugged, and peered at the pages of the book, as if he held secrets from her there. “Of crows I widnot,” she said.
    He chuckled. “The Widnot held the villagers prisoners in their homes with nerve-rending screams. Those who dared go out were never seen or heard from again, swept up in the talons of the great scaled beast.”
    “A dragon?” She guessed.
    “Yes, a dragon. Shall I continue? Or will Widnots keep you awake? There are other stories.” He turned the pages of the book as if to search out another, less frightening.
    Felicity stayed his hand. “I shall not be afraid tonight.”
    “How can you be sure?” he asked.
    “Miss Deering will be in the bed with me.”
    “Ah.” His lips quirked. “How fortunate you are.”
    “A fortune?” Mrs. Olive asked, hand to ear. “Is it a story about lost treasure, then?”
    Lord Wharton allowed another amused glance to touch his normally restrained features.
    “Felicity’s fortune, lost to me,” he said. “What say you, Mrs.