Read Online Love's Tangle by Isabelle Goddard - Free Book Online Page A

chosen.”
    How had the old woman known that? She must have been watching me, Elinor guessed, watching me as I walked around the fairground. It was an uncomfortable thought.
    The woman reached out again for both of Elinor’s hands and turned them palm upwards. “What do we have here, my dearie?” she rasped. “Ah yes, I see an interesting future for you. There’ll be a man for sure, a man to care for you and children to love. And they’re coming soon.”
    It was the old staple of fortune telling, she thought caustically. Tell any girl who comes your way she will shortly be married and she will leave happy. But the woman was tightening the pressure on her hands and bringing them closer to her veiled eyes.
    Her voice had dwindled now to a hoarse whisper. “You have chosen well, my dear, in coming to Allingham.”
    She must mean the village, Elinor thought, not the Hall, unless the crone had earlier seen her in company with those she knew to be its servants. Another wave of discomfort flooded through her. She had been comprehensively spied upon! Indignation urged her to rise and leave but the woman’s next words were confounding.
    “Allingham Hall is your home.” It was a statement of fact which allowed no dissent.
    “For the time being,” Elinor amended.
    “Allingham Hall is your home, my dear. You have come home for good.”
    She felt a shiver of recognition but promptly dismissed it. True, she had felt a sense of belonging from the very first night, but her home? The grandest of houses belonging to a duke? It was nonsense.
    “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said weakly.
    The woman brushed across her palms again and fell slowly into a deep trance. Her eyes half closed, she swayed slightly and her voice when it came was like the rush of wind before a storm.
    “There is a woman. Dark hair. Skin as white as alabaster. She comes from over the sea but she is in distress. Distress.” The syllables hissed around the hot enclosed space and Elinor felt her forehead break out in perspiration while a cold prickling flew down her spine.
    “Her eyes are the green of a deep, deep ocean. Amazing eyes,” the old woman crooned. “But she is in distress.”
    Elinor hardly dared to breathe.
    “You will save her. You will make all right.”
    “How?” There was no answer from her informant. “How?” she stuttered again.
    At this the woman jerked upright and emitted a sigh that echoed around the tent, a sigh so heavy that it seemed dragged from the very earth beneath their feet. Elinor was transfixed and could not move. Gradually the woman’s eyes cleared and all vestige of the trance vanished.
    She smiled cunningly, assessing her customer with newly focused eyes. “You’ll be all right, dearie. A nice man and plenty of babies in store for you.”
    It was the trite commonplace of fortune telling once more and she realized the séance was over. Whatever the woman had seen, she saw it no more. She pushed back her chair hard and it fell to the ground.
    “A few falls before you get there though, dearie.” And the woman let out a high-pitched cackle. Elinor fled.
    She rushed through the tent flap as though pursued by a thousand demons and cannoned straight into Roland Frant. He took a firm hold of her shoulders to steady her and peered into her face. “Is that you, Nell? Whatever is the matter?”
    “It’s nothing, Mr. Frant,” she murmured. “Really it is nothing.” The last thing she wanted was to tell what she had just heard.
    “But, my dear, you came through that doorway like a bullet from a gun. Whatever ails you?” Her spirits sank. He was not easily going to let her go. “If you are in any trouble, maybe I can help,” he was coaxing.
    “I am not in trouble but thank you for your concern. It is merely I found the fortune teller a little frightening.”
    For the first time he looked up at the sign which hung high above the tent. “Madame Demelza?” He tutted loudly. “My cousin’s hand is