Read Online Storm by Jayne Fresina - Free Book Online Page B

that single memory of a summer long gone.
    But when True Deverell visited that little house in Truro, it was an event special enough to warrant tea in the best china, as well as two kinds of cake. Storm recalled a sense of giddy excitement in the air as he watched his mother frantically pinching her cheeks in the mirror and fussing over her hair. He still kept her china and used it when he had special guests, thinking of her smile every time he did so.
    Thus, his thoughts were carried back again to the woman and child he'd left eating breakfast from that same "best" china in his house today. Another boy and his mother, seemingly alone in the world. A nervous widow running from trouble, clutching at her coat buttons and wielding a whip.
    He knew when a woman was keeping secrets. He knew it the first time he met Olivia and he knew it when he was merely a boy looking after his mother. On both those occasions the secret kept was the same: they were in love with his father. But what could be the supposedly chaste Mrs. Kelly's secret?
    "I have worried about you all alone on that farm with no female company," Olivia was saying. "And although an efficient housekeeper is a good start to getting your life in order, it is no substitute for a love life. You need a wife waiting at home."
    "No woman would be addled enough to wait around for me unless I pay her," he replied wryly. "And I wouldn't want her to. I never know when I'm getting home most days, or what state I'll be in after a day in the fields. I'm not much company. I've been alone too long. No," he added briskly, "animals are better house mates. They don't require clever conversation, just a bowl of milk and a scratch behind the ears."
    Olivia chuckled. "Oh, if you were in love, you'd be eager to get home to her. And if she loved you back, she wouldn't mind what state you were in, or how late you were, or what your mood. As long as you got there."
    What a curious thing love was, he thought. It made sensible women like Olivia say the most insensible things.
    He thought about Kate Kelly again. A strange, chilly madam, who claimed celibacy, yet wore stockings embroidered with red climbing roses. A woman with a figure out of his dreams and lips a dying man would give up his last breath to kiss.
    In short, the most unlikely looking housekeeper he'd ever laid his lusty eyes upon.
    A memory came to him suddenly, of his father's wife— Lady Charlotte— slapping him hard across the face once when she caught him running a curious finger over the curved gilt acanthus scrolls of a picture frame. He'd been waiting to see his father in the hall at Roscarrock when that mean-tempered bitch came out of nowhere and he felt the sharp, cruel sting of her palm followed directly by the scrape of her fingernails over the smarting flesh.
    "How dare you put your filthy, peasant hands on the art, boy. You are not worthy to look at it, you little bastard, let alone touch it."
    It was only one of several similar encounters with Lady Charlotte, who could not bear the sight of Storm because she said his father paid more attention to him than he did to her son, Ransom.
    "You're very fidgety today, Storm," his future stepmother exclaimed, once again drawing him out of his thoughts. "And look where you're driving the horses, if you please. We've almost gone off the road twice. What's wrong with you? Ants in your breeches?"
    Ants? No. But something. Someone.
    He smirked, imagining the expression on Olivia's face when he finally introduced the lovely, autumn-haired Kate Kelly as his housekeeper.
    If she stayed. If she was still there today when he returned home. He'd left her hovering on her toes, ready to take flight, but short of tying her to a chair there was little he could do to keep her if she chose to leave.
    He thought of her driving that cart into the river at speed. The haughty, independent Duchess was much too impatient to wait around for anyone, unless she became trapped, stuck against her will. And