Charity Begins at Home by Alicia Rasley Read Free Book Online Page A

fail to perk her up."
    "She won't see you," Lawrence said with a return to his gloomy disdain.
    "Oh, I shan't give her the chance to tell me! I'll just burst in like the big bad wolf and blow all her protests out the window. Now go on, you find the broom, and I'll go huff and puff and blow down your mama's door."
    Braden heard the boys pelter off, then the girl's heels clicking on the oak parquet. "Ick. Little boy hands are always so sticky. Jam, jam, all over my dress." At first he thought she was addressing the maid or had perhaps discovered the listener above her. But then he saw her emerge from under the balcony and cross to the brass mirror on the opposite wall, and he realized she was talking to herself. He wondered if that was a habit of hers, if she was so used to cajoling and coaxing others she addressed herself with the same cheerful purpose.
    Now he recognized her as exactly the Charity he had unconsciously envisioned, a small girl with a neat figure, in a chocolate riding habit of fashionably military cut. The short jacket just skimmed her trim waist; the hem of her skirt was a little dusty from the floor. Her thick curls were of a matching brown, tumbled from their pins by little-boy hugs. What he could observe of her face was pretty, triangular, wide at the brow and pointed at the chin, with a certain liveliness around the dark eyes that accorded with her lively voice.
    Her features arranged so easily into a merry smile that he thought it must be customary, along with the wrinkled-nose face she made in the mirror. She rubbed at a smudge on her cheek, murmuring, "Minx! The elegant Anna will never believe you took in London." She laughed at her reflection's reaction to this and suddenly leaned over the rosewood table and kissed herself in the streaked mirror. Then she made another silly face and vanished, or so it seemed, but Braden realized she had only run up the steps. He melted back into the shadows, for spies best remained hidden, and watched her emerge at the top of the stairs and head to his sister's room, the motley assortment of blossoms back in her hand.
    Once she had knocked and entered without waiting for a response, Tristan moved closer to his sister's open door. He was not, in the general way, an eavesdropper. But this chit had marched into the house and immediately set about disciplining his nephews, very capably, he had to admit. Then she started talking to herself and kissing herself in the mirror. Of course, she thought herself unobserved, but her unconventional actions, coupled with that reference to the boys' criminal pagan of an uncle, made him wary. Now she meant to assault his sister with her unique brand of impertinent cheer.
    He could forgive himself a certain unease about Anna's fate at the hands of this very managing Miss Calder.
    But fascination with her methods kept him out of the room and out of sight, though still within earshot. He leaned against the wall, waiting to hear Anna's faint voice of protest. But she never got the chance. Miss Calder began chattering as soon as she cleared the threshold. "Anna, dear, how lovely to see you. But how sad, too! What a sorrowful time you've had of it. Kenny was so young. Such sad news, and the vicar told me you had to manage it all quite alone until your brother arrived. I'm so glad he's here, for I can't bear to think of you by yourself in this big house. Of course, you have the children, but they really cannot help as a brother can. You have been so brave! Oh, my dear, go ahead and cry, only you'll probably make me cry, too, and I don't look quite so adorable in tears. Just look at you! It's entirely unfair how glorious you look with your eyes glistening so. Your nose doesn't redden in the slightest! However do you manage it?"
    Before Anna could answer this unanswerable question, Miss Calder sped on. "I brought you some flowers. Just wildflowers. I gathered them from the copse, but they are pretty, aren't they? Have you been out to see the