Rushed to the Altar by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online Page B

presence that had been her father was no longer there, and now she stood for long minutes trying to grasp the reality. His skin was still warm, his hair still thick and lustrous as it had been in life, but she was alone in the room.
    Alone in the room and, for the first time in her twenty years on earth, on her own. No longer would she have the knowledge of her father’s strength at her back, his sometimes sardonic humor hauling her back from the more emotional flights she had taken during her childhood and young adulthood, his humorous but nonetheless powerful intercessions between the ambitions of his wife for their daughter and Clarissa’s own frequently conflicting wishes.
    Francis Astley had always been behind his daughter, his love a constant in her growing. And only now, in the great void left by his absent spirit, did she realize how much she had relied on that love, on that strength.
    Clarissa wasn’t sure how long she stood there but finally she pulled the bell by the fireplace. Hesketh, the butler, answered the summons immediately. He glanced towards his late master’s chair and with instant comprehension said he would summon the physician.
    “Yes, that would be best.” Clarissa knew she sounded vague and distant. She would deal with her own grief later, but now she had to break the news to her little brother. Francis was ten and five years earlier had lost his mother. Lady Lavinia had died giving birth to a stillborn babe, and the squire’s enduring grief hadcast a pall over the little household until finally he had returned his attention to the living. The bond then between father and son had grown stronger than ever, and while Clarissa had tried to prepare the child for the squire’s imminent death once she herself recognized its inevitability, she was not convinced Francis had taken it in.
    Any more than she had, she thought. Knowing something was going to happen was one thing, the reality after the fact quite another.
    Now she left Hesketh to deal with the practicalities and went in search of her brother. She found him, as she expected and hoped, in the stables with one of his favorite people, Silas, the head groom. Silas was generally a taciturn man but he never showed any irritation or impatience with the child’s nonstop chatter and endless questions. He would be an invaluable support when it came to helping Francis come to terms with his father’s death.
    They had buried Squire Astley a week later. He had been well loved in the County where he’d served as Master of Hounds and Justice of the Peace for most of his adult life, and the church and the graveyard had been so full of mourners Clarissa had given orders that tables should be set up upon the lawns to host the crowds who came up to the house to pay their respects to the grieving family.
    That afternoon the family lawyer, another close friend of the squire’s, had solemnly read the will tothe only surviving members of the family: the squire’s two children, Clarissa and Francis, and his brother, Luke.
    Luke . . . so very different from his older brother. Where the squire had been powerfully built, bluff and hearty, always straight in his dealings with his fellows, Luke was tall, thin faced, with angular features and small, deep-set eyes that never met another’s gaze. Hard and cold as little brown stones, they slithered away from all contact even as he smiled and honeyed words dripped from his lips.
    Clarissa had always disliked and distrusted him, although he had never given her overt reason. Her distaste for his company was instinctive, although her father treated his brother with the same courtesy and consideration he afforded to everyone and Luke was always a welcome visitor to the gracious redbrick manor house that had been his own childhood home. He visited rarely, however, and Clarissa was convinced he only came when he needed something from his brother, or, she suspected, when he was running away from his creditors.
    On that May