Heart of Thunder by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online

him until they left Pennsylvania. His reply caught up with her a week later, telling her how furious he was. He would send an escort to meet her as soon as she let him know that she had reached Cheyenne. But she didn’t wire him again. She was giving herself more time with Adrien.
    Her father had cautioned her not to use her full name as she neared home and had telegraphed her other fatherly advice, or, more specifically, orders. Hamilton Kingsley worried about his daughter, but she didn’t begrudge him his protective attitude, not anymore. There had been too many years when he never scolded because she was so new to him. He couldn’t deny her anything. After all, she hadn’t even met him until shewas nine years old. It had taken so long for him to get her away from her grandparents in England. And he never did get her brother, Sheldon.
    Her grandparents had been so strict that Samantha hadn’t known what a normal childhood was like. From the time she could walk and talk, she had been expected to act like an adult, but without the privileges of an adult. She hadn’t known what it was like to play, to run, to laugh. All of those things had been strictly forbidden by her grandmother, and, if she was caught acting in an unladylike manner, punishments were swift.
    Her grandfather, Sir John Blackstone, hadn’t been so bad. It was Henrietta who had been a terror. Henrietta Blackstone had hated the American Hamilton Kingsley for marrying her only daughter and had contrived to separate Samantha’s parents after the children were born. Ellen Kingsley had come home to the Blackstone country estate with her two children and had taken her own life a month later. Samantha could never blame her mother for killing herself, for she knew what it was like living with Henrietta. And she never once had doubted that Henrietta’s harping was what had driven her mother to suicide.
    When her father threatened to take the Blackstones to court, since they wouldn’t even let him see his children, Sir John had talked his wife into letting them go rather than face scandal. Samantha had jumped at the chance to leave Blackstone Manor, but Sheldon had refused to come. Henrietta’s influence over him was strong, and Hamilton had had to settle for only one of his children.
    Samantha had been so afraid, afraid that her father would expect the same things Henrietta had expected. When he gave no sign of doing so, Samantha had slowly started doing all the things she had never been allowed to do, balking at anything that had to do with being a lady. She had tested her father in their first years together, taking advantage of his love and his joy in finally having her with him.
    She felt terrible about that now, even going so far as to follow some of his directions. She used only half her name once they began traveling into the area where people knew of Hamilton Kingsley’s wealth. She would not make it easy for someone to get a lot of money by kidnapping Kingsley’s only daughter. Kidnappings were common, and the kidnappers were hardly ever caught. So she would have a large escort to take her the rest of the way home, even though that would leave the ranch short of men.
    Samantha sighed and looked across the coach at Adrien sitting next to Mr. Patch. She no longer balked at being a lady. In fact, she was trying her damnedest to remember everything her grandmother once had forced her to learn. Adrien wouldn’t take anyone for a wife except a lady. She would be that lady. She would be Adrien’s wife.
    Her long lashes were lowered so that he couldn’t tell she was watching him. Samantha unfastened the top button of her white silk blouse. The mulberry-blue jacket that matched her skirt was on the seat beside her because the coach was so warm. She could use that warmth as an excuse to undo another button, then another. The ruffles up the front of her blouse fell slowly to the sides, baring her throat after the fourth button had been undone.
    Adrien did