Beauty From Ashes by Eugenia Price Read Free Book Online Page A

members didn’t show. “So I’ll just repeat my question. You’re sure, James, that Papa’s well? That no one’s sick?”
    “Eve knows you better than I do,” James said easily. “The last time I saw you, Sister, I felt sure you’d stopped being such a worrywart. Everyone is in good health and our father is as excited as a boy at the prospect of his birthday celebration. Of course, so is my daughter Becca Belle. So, put a wide
    smile on your face and make them both still 61 happier. Have I made myself clear? You’ll all find out soon enough why I’ve met you alone.”
    “Can’t you give us even a small hint?” Anne begged.
    “Only one, madam,” James Hamilton said in his most grandiose manner. “And that is that immediately on entering my entrance hall, you will find our father waiting for you—arms wide, face aglow— but as part of the plan, he will be alone too.”
    Holding her brother’s arm as they walked up the landscaped path toward the Hopeton mansion, Anne kept nagging him. “You’re just not the kind of person to plan surprises, James. Anyway, it isn’t my birthday. Your aging sister has already had her fifty-second earlier this year.”
    Smiling down at her, James asked, “Who said anything about a surprise for you, Anne? And I beg to differ that I’m not a man to plan surprises. Our father’s oldest and dearest friend, now that Mr. James Hamilton is dead, informed me this week by the post that he will indeed be able to attend Papa’s birthday celebration day after tomorrow. That’s going to be a surprise and I
    arranged it.”
    “Mr. Thomas Spalding is coming from Sapelo Island? Oh, James, that will please Papa no end! But I thought Mr. Spalding was too feeble to travel.”
    In as proud a tone as he ever allowed himself, her brother replied, “I’ve arranged to send one of my schooners for the old fellow. It—it could be the last time he and our father will actually have time for a good, long talk together.” Smiling down at her again, he added, “But I’m sure I haven’t said a word about a surprise for my sister Anne.”

Chapter 2
    It seemed to old Jock Couper, further paining his stiff back by trying to sit up straight on one of James Hamilton’s highly polished Queen Anne chairs in the Hopeton entrance hall, that Anne and her brood would never get there. For a man nearing his ninetieth birthday, he felt fairly well, he supposed. As ready for the excitement of being the guest of honor at such a memorable occasion as a man could expect, but for him, waiting had never been easy.
    He squared his bent shoulders and tried 63 to sit erect for the anticipated moment when the apple of his eye, his daughter Anne, and her children trooped through the gracious front door of his son’s fine plantation house. How can it be, he thought, that my Anne is now a lady of fifty-two years! To his fading old eyes she was as lovely as ever. A bit thicker at the waist, perhaps, but there were advantages even to old age and dimming eyesight: Anne, to her doting father, looked as bonnie as ever. Bonnier than any of her three sweet daughters would ever be. Pete, always his favorite if he were to tell the truth—which, of course, he meant never to do—could talk her way out of any predicament she might be likely to encounter. Jock Couper, himself a facile talker, relished the trait in her. Like her tall, handsome father, Couper’s lamented late son-in-law, Pete seemed at times to talk too much, but the lass never failed to speak with content and remarkable wisdom for her age.
    Pete, he believed, was somehow different from other young ladies of her years. He’d never forget the day he’d urged her to tell her mother that she meant not to marry because she still felt bonded to her
    dead young playmate, William, Anna Matilda King’s boy. How, he often wondered, had Anne received such a decision by her eldest living daughter when she had been so deeply attached to Pete’s splendid father, John