Longing by Mary Balogh Read Free Book Online

involuntarily at the lovers again. They were no longer embracing, but were still standing close together. A tall, slim woman with long dark hair, and a broad-chested, dark-haired man only a little taller than she. He had seen them both before, if the distance did not deceive his eyes. He was last night’s leader and today’s half-naked puddler. She was the maiden of Cwmbran. Though perhaps not a maiden after all.
    Alex felt a sudden and quite unexpected stabbing of envy and loneliness. They seemed somehow a part of their surroundings. A part of this picturesque and remote Welsh valley whose steep hillsides closed it in away from the world.
    Except that the world had come looking for it last night.
    The sun was dropping behind the hills opposite, deepening the orange to red. Already it was dusk in the valley. Soon it would be dark. He felt something—some longing, some yearning that he could not quite grasp or name. Some sense, perhaps, of being an outsider in something that was beautiful. Some sense of being in a place where he did not belong but wanted to belong. Some senseof—home. But no, that could not be it. He could not put words to the feeling. The valley was lovely despite the signs of industry, and he was seeing it at its loveliest, at sunset on a summer evening. Was it surprising that he was affected by its beauty and a little dissatisfied that there was no one with whom to share it except his young daughter?
    The two lovers, he saw, looking downward again, were making their way down toward the terraced houses, arm in arm.
    â€œWell,” he said, looking at his daughter, who was unusually quiet, “shall we go home before it gets dark and we get lost?”
    â€œBut I am with you, Papa,” she said, still holding tightly to his hand. “Are we going to live here forever?”
    â€œPerhaps not forever,” he said. “But for a while. Will you mind?”
    â€œNo,” she said. And she added with the candor of a child, “It annoys me to be with Grandmama sometimes. She thinks that if I am enjoying myself I must be doing something wrong. That is silly, is it not, Papa?”
    Yes, very. But one had to be loyal to one’s mother-in-law. “Grandmama wants you to grow up to be a proper lady,” he said.
    â€œIf a proper lady frowns all the time, I do not want to be one, Papa,” she said firmly.
    He wisely dropped the topic. But she was not quite finished.
    â€œNurse is just as bad,” she said. “She would not let me go downstairs today to talk with the servants, as I do at home. And she would allow me to walk only just outside the house, with her close by. You know how fast and how far Nurse walks. She will never allow me out here on the hills. She thinks I might get lost or eaten by wolves. There are no wolves, are there, Papa? People have funny ideas about Wales, don’t they? I think Nurse is just lazy.”
    And rather elderly. He had kept her as Verity’s nurse because she was the one woman who had been with his daughter since birth—and because it was his mother-in-law who had originally selected her. But Verity needed more than a nurse. She needed companionship, but he could not spend a great deal of his own time with her.
    â€œPerhaps it is time for a governess,” he said. “You are six yearsold, after all. I shall have to see what I can do.” He should have thought of it before they came. He should have seen about hiring someone and bringing her with them.
    â€œGrandmama taught me how to read and do sums,” she said, tripping along at his side. “I don’t need a governess, Papa. Just someone to take me out. Someone who is willing to do things with me.”
    A governess. Yes. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
    He wondered foolishly and uncharacteristically what
he
would do for companionship. And he thought again about the strongly muscled puddler and the dark-haired woman whom he