Read Online Simply Love by Mary Balogh - Free Book Online

“It will be hard—for me if not for him.”
    â€œIt will,” Lady Aidan agreed. “We will be sending Davy to school next year when he is twelve, and already I am feeling bereft.”
    They exchanged a smile, just two concerned mothers commiserating with each other.
    â€œThat poor man,” Mrs. Pritchard said softly in her musical Welsh accent as the gentlemen joined the ladies. “It is a good thing he is not of the working classes. He would never have found employment after the wars were over. He would have become a beggar and starved as so many of those soldiers did.”
    â€œOh, I am not so sure of that, Aunt Mari,” Lady Aidan said. “There is a thread of steel in him despite his quiet manners. I believe he would have overcome any adversity, even poverty.”
    They were talking, Anne realized, of Mr. Butler, about whom she had been feeling horribly guilty all evening and whom she had consequently avoided even looking at—though she had been aware of him almost every moment.
    â€œWhat happened to him?” she asked.
    â€œWar,” Lady Aidan said. “He followed his brother, Viscount Ravensberg, to the Peninsula against everyone’s wishes but his own. His brother brought him home not long after, more dead than alive. But he recovered, and eventually he offered his services to Wulfric and came here. That all happened before I met Aidan, who was still a cavalry colonel in the Peninsula at the time, the superior officer of my brother, who never came home. How
glad
I am that the wars are over at last.”
    It was some time later when Anne noticed that Mr. Butler was seated alone in a far corner of the room after all the groups had just rearranged themselves with the setting up of some card tables. She herself was with Miss Thompson and the Earl and Countess of Rosthorn, all of whom had declined a place at the tables. But Anne stood and excused herself before she could lose her courage. She could not allow the whole evening to go by without speaking to Mr. Butler, though she doubted he would have any wish to speak with her.
    He looked up sharply when he saw her approach and then got to his feet.
    â€œMiss Jewell,” he said.
    Something in his manner and voice told her that indeed he would have preferred to remain alone, that he did not like her—but she could hardly blame him for that, could she?
    She looked into his face and quite deliberately adjusted her focus so that she looked at both sides. He wore a black patch over his right eye—or perhaps over where his right eye had been. The rest of that side of his face was covered from brow to jaw and on down his neck with purplish burn marks. His empty right sleeve was pinned to the side of his evening coat.
    He was, she noticed, half a head taller than she—and she had not been mistaken about his broad chest and shoulders. He was clearly not a man who had wallowed in his disabilities.
    â€œI went back last night,” she said, “a few minutes after I ran away. But you had gone.”
    He looked back at her in silence for a few moments.
    â€œI am sorry,” he said abruptly then, “that I frightened you. I did not intend to do so.”
    Courteous words, courteously spoken. Yet she could still feel his dislike, his reluctance to speak with her.
    â€œNo, you misunderstand,” she said. “
I
am sorry. It is what I went back to say. I truly am. Sorry.”
    What else could she say? She could only make matters worse by trying to offer an explanation for her behavior.
    Again there was a silence between them long enough to be uncomfortable. She almost turned and walked away. She had said what she had felt compelled to say. There was nothing else.
    â€œGoing back was a courageous thing to do,” he said. “It was getting dark and the cliff top is a lonely, dangerous place to be at night. And I was a stranger to you. Thank you for returning even though I had already gone