Read Online Lucky Logan Finds Love by Barbara Cartland - Free Book Online Page A

be ready to move in immediately.”
    Belinda had only half-listened to what he was saying.
    She had been deep in her thoughts.
    Now, as she walked behind the footman across the hall, she felt very small and alone.
    She was wondering desperately what she should say when she was interviewed.
    A footman opened a door and in a quiet respectful voice, he announced,
    “Miss Brown, my Lady.”
    The room was very different from the one she had just left and was a traditional drawing room not unlike her mother’s.
    She was instinctively aware that everything in it was valuable and it professed a perfection all its own.
    A woman in black was seated at the fireside.
    Belinda walked towards her, aware that Lady Logan was small with dead-white hair.
    As she reached her, Belinda dropped a curtsy.
    “Good morning, Miss Brown,” Lady Logan said in a soft pleasant voice. “It is kind of you to come to see me so quickly. Please sit down.”
    Belinda sat on the edge of a chair next to Lady Logan’s.
    She looked at her and realised that Lady Logan must have been beautiful when she was young. Now her face was lined and her complexion was very pale, as if she were in ill health.
    As she waited expectantly, she had the feeling that Lady Logan was finding it hard to see her at all clearly.
    “What I have been looking for,” Lady Logan began, “is somebody who can speak languages that are not usually taught in schools. You say in your letter that is what you can do.”
    “I know quite a number of different languages, my Lady,” Belinda replied, “and I find it easy to learn new ones very quickly.”
    “You look too young to have so much knowledge,” Lady Logan remarked, “but I am sure you have been told that before and it is always annoying to have people saying so.”
    Belinda gave a little laugh because it was so true.
    “I would like you now to read me a little from a book that my son gave me which is written in Persian. Is that one of the languages you are familiar with?”
    Persian was one of the languages that her father had taught her and she remembered his showing her a book he had brought back from Teheran. It had been exquisitely illustrated in the seventeenth century.
    Lady Logan handed her the book, and as Belinda took it, she realised it was of the same period.
    Gently she turned over the pages one by one.
    To her delight, there was a poem that had also been in her father’s book.
    He had made her translate it.
    It was therefore easy for her to read it slowly in her clear musical voice.
    It made every word she spoke sound as romantic as the author had intended.
    As she finished, Lady Logan exclaimed,
    “That was very clever of you, Miss Brown, but I find it difficult to believe that anybody could translate from a strange language so easily and so well!”
    Belinda chuckled.
    “I must be honest, my Lady,” she said, “and admit that I have read that poem before. It was in a book belonging to my father. But if you wish to test me, I shall read something else with which I am not familiar.”
    “I am not going to test you any further,” Lady Logan replied. “I know you are exactly the sort of reader I am looking for and it will be delightful to have someone young with me.”
    She gave Belinda a little smile before she went on,
    “I was so afraid I would have to have somebody old and crotchety who would read the books my son gives me as if it was a duty rather than a delight.”
    “If all your books are like this one,” Belinda remarked, “I can assure you it will be an inexpressible delight for me to read them.”
    “Then it is settled,” Lady Logan said with satisfaction. “How soon can you come to me?”
    “I can come at once,” Belinda answered. “The carriage that brought me here has my trunks strapped to it. And if you did not want me, I had really nowhere to go in London.”
    “Then of course you must stay here.”
    Lady Logan rang a little bell that stood on a table beside her.
    Belinda noticed it