Read Online The Secret Gift by Jaclyn Reding - Free Book Online Page A

sufficiently to continue their noble lines into the modern age. So it wasn’t just his mother, or his uncle, whose hopes he had riding on his shoulders. It was the hopes and determination of every one of those periwigged, regal-looking faces that lined the venerable halls of his legacy.
    Perhaps his mother was right. With circumstances the way they were, he would never be able to just meet a girl, get to know her, fall in love. Every time he encountered a woman, he would always have to wonder whether her interest was truly in him or in the prestige and wealth of his titles.
    So, then, why put it off any longer?
    “Draw up a list. Indicate who you think is the best candidate,” he said, his voice heavy with acceptance. “Talk to His Grace, my uncle. I’ll be coming down to London in the next week or so for work. We can meet and finalize the details then.”
     
    Contrary to the morning before, Libby was up with the dawn the next day. She had hardly slept a wink throughout the night, so anxious about what she might find in the parish record books.
    Miss Aggie and Miss Maggie were in the kitchen when she emerged from her bedroom, showered, dressed, and ready for the day.
    “Goodness, child, but you’re up early. Even the cockerel has yet to crow!”
    Though Libby wanted to waste no time in getting to the church, she knew it was probably too early for Sean MacNally to have awoken. So she had a simple breakfast of porridge and tea with the sisters, listening to their birdlike chatter, all the while watching the clock as it moved maddeningly slowly toward the eighth hour.
    She was sitting in the churchyard, pulling the weeds that had begun to overgrow one of the older graves, when Sean MacNally came through the iron gate around nine.
    It was a beautiful morning, blessed with clear skies so blue and so full of fat white clouds that they seemed to have been painted by an artist’s brush. The sea was mild, and she’d even taken a stroll down to the water’s edge, where she’d been greeted by the gulls swooping low over the shore. The pocket of her jacket was now full of the seashells she’d quietly gathered. Libby smiled at the minister and stood up, brushing the dirt and grass from her hands. “Good morning, Sean.”
    “Good morning to you, Libby. You’re here bright and early, I see. I try to do that myself sometimes. So many of these graves are forgotten. I won’t keep you waiting with chitchat. I’m sure you’re anxious to see those record books.”
    The minister led her inside the church, past the altar to a small room off the main nave. Once there, he fitted a rather ancient-looking key into the rather ancient-looking lock and shoved the door open to allow her inside. The room on the other side reminded her of a monk’s cell, with a small single lamp at the center table. The walls, she saw as she stepped into the shadowed room, were lined with shelves of register books, and there was an antiquated, musty sort of smell that fittingly marked the room as an archive.
    “I keep thinking one of these days I’ll find the time to computerize these records.” Sean smiled. “Of course, that would require a computer, which we don’t have. We’re still a bit nineteenth century here, I’m afraid. The school’s headmaster offered to let me use the school’s computer at night, but I just haven’t gotten to the point of lugging all these books over there. It’s difficult when you’re the only minister for a region this size. I service this village and all the outlying settlements. So, we continue to write the records all by hand, in the way they have been done since ... well, since time began, I suppose, more out of tradition than anything else.”
    He turned toward the shelves. “Now, let’s start with the year your mother was born.”
    He removed a large folio-sized book that looked quite like a ledger, with pages of columns and boxes scribbled with notations. “The books are broken down into three