Read Online Flower for a Bride by Barbara Rowan - Free Book Online Page B

deposited—almost literally since he had carried her from the car—in his house, and handed over to the care of Miss Mattie, and then apparently forgotten all about while he calmly took himself off to lunch elsewhere. Although, of course, she had absolutely no right to expect him to do otherwise, and considering the recent treatment meted out to him by Jay it was very good of him to bring her here at all.
    But, nevertheless, her feeling of disappointment grew until it assumed the proportions of something more like dismay, and it was not until she caught Mist Mattie looking at her with raised brows that she realized that some of her feelings were showing in her face.
    She felt the color rise under her skin, and her eyes grow confused. Miss Mattie smiled in the inscrutable but strangely knowing way of the old and the shrewd.
    “So you’ll be quite safe, my dear,” she said. “Do you really want to see the portrait of Jamie’s mother?”
    “Yes, of course.” But Lois was no longer so sure. All in a moment she would have been happy to think up an excuse for rigidly avoiding the library of this delightful house.
    “Then come along.” Miss Mattie turned, and already they were outside in the corridor. It was very thickly carpeted, and their footsteps on that carpet made absolutely no sound. Lois limped behind the queer little figure in the black dress, wondering all at once how she had lived here so many years and been happy when after all there was a very decided barrier between her and the master of the place.
    One day Dom Julyan would be the Marquiz de Valerira, and the barrier would be even higher then, and more insupportable. At least, it would be insupportable to Lois. . .
    . Looking out through an open doorway at the exquisite beauty of one solitary vista of the garden she told herself that it would be intolerable to live here and feel that there was a great gulf between her and the man who employed her. That he was only her employer, that he looked upon her as an employee, and that was all there was to it. . . .
    And then, remembering that she herself was going home to England in a few days she was no longer so sure.
    A beggar at the gates was in a happier position than a beggar far removed from the gates. . . .
    And then she shook herself in an alarmed fashion, and asked herself what in the world was she thinking, and was it merely the result of being a little low in health, and feeling a sharp pain in her ankle when she leaned on it too heavily? Of not wanting at all to leave so much color and beauty behind and go back to an unimaginative and slightly frustrating job... ?
    Of course that was it! . . .
    And then Miss Mattie flung open the door of the library with a kind of flourish. Lois accepted her invitation to step inside first, and found herself in a vast room with a glistening floor of marble, fluted columns that supported the painted ceiling, and cases containing hundreds of beautifully bound books. There were books bound in vellum and crushed morocco, calf and even faded silk, and the rich colors glowed behind the protective glass. Between the cases and over the fireplace there were portraits, and it was the one over the fireplace to which Miss Mattie attracted Lois’s attention.
    “Look!” she said. “There it is!”
    CHAPTER SIX
    Lois looked up almost unwillingly at the painted face in the portrait. She had been prepared for a beautiful face, but the wife of Dom Julyan had been much more than merely beautiful. By comparison with her Jay was obvious, and even slightly vulgar, with a tinsel glitter Donna Valerira had never needed to possess. The artist who had reproduced her on canvas had concentrated on capturing the striking effect of a dead-white skin against a shadowy background, and the rather slumbrous look in the glorious dark eyes. There was just a hint of red in the luxuriant hair that was worn parted sleekly in the middle and drawn into a heavy knot on the nape of the slender neck. She was in