Read Online The Clergyman's Daughter by Julia Jeffries - Free Book Online Page A

his family to prepare for the prodigal’s return, time during which he had wound up his affairs in Town and, incidentally, had also called in an expensive but discreet modiste to outfit Jessica with a new wardrobe to take to Renard Chase with her.
    Jessica gazed down at her fashionable gown of lilac half-mourning, comparing it with the threadbare black dress that she had been wearing when Raeburn found her, the same dress she had worn the night she fled from his home. Half mad with anguish, she had wanted nothing that would remind her of the inhabitants of that house, and she and Willa had escaped with only the clothes on their backs. Later, when those garments had faded and frayed, Willa had advised her mistress to use part of the money paid her by her publishers to purchase something sturdy and warm, but Jessica had clung to her widow’s weeds as if they were a shield, a battle-scarred banner, with each new rent and tear a further charge against the Foxes…. Of course she hadn’t told Raeburn that. When he said grimly that he was ordering new clothing for her, she had made little comment, beyond a tight-lipped insistence that she was not ready to put aside her mourning entirely, even after thirteen months.
    Jessica sighed and glanced anxiously at her daughter. The interior of the coach was extremely cold, but, wrapped in a warm new blanket of softest Kashmir wool, Lottie slept peacefully in Willa’s arms, lulled by the rocking motion of the well-sprung carriage marked with the Raeburn crest. Had it really been only a little more than a year since Andrew’s death? Jessica mused. It seemed to her that she had lived forever in dread of discovery. But no, only thirteen short months had passed, and now she was returning to Renard Chase, as everything she had ever feared came true…. She wondered drearily how long it would be before the Foxes made their move to take the baby from her. In her heart she knew it was only a matter of time.
    A faint cough attracted her attention, and she turned to look at the man sitting beside her, his long legs stretched diagonally across the narrow space between the two seats, catching the hem of the rug covering Jessica’s lap and crowding her tightly into the corner. Raeburn was peering at her intently, his wide brow furrowed as if he were trying to see into her mind.
    “Jess, do you really hate Renard Chase so much?” he inquired quietly, his tone oddly gentle. With resignation she nodded silently, and after a moment he noted with forced lightness, “That’s strange. I’ve always vastly preferred it to any of my other houses.”
    Aware that sullen rudeness would serve no purpose, Jessica made an effort to smile. “I’ve never denied that the Chase is beautiful,” she conceded with characteristic honesty. Andrew had explained to her once that the seventeenth-century house was one of the earliest efforts of John Webb, a student of Inigo Jones, and while its Palladian design was clearly imitative, more suited to a Mediterranean clime, the architecture was light and graceful, a symphony of white marble and airy arcades that were singularly inviting in the summer. Andrew had loved the house too, never understanding that to Jessica those tall Ionic columns bad seemed like sentries bent on keeping her, the interloper, outside…. When she and Willa had sneaked out of the sleeping house in the middle of the night, she had heard her footsteps echoing behind her, and to her distressed mind they had sounded like the mocking laughter of all the Foxes who had ever lived there.
    Raeburn said, “I think you could be happy if you’d try, Jess. In your heart you know your daughter belongs here, and I want you to feel that you also belong. Promise me you’ll make an effort. That’s all I ask.”
    Jessica smiled without humor, her memories still too vivid to make concession easy. “I think perhaps you ask too much, Graham,” she muttered.
    Raeburn’s tone hardened, and his eyes pointedly