Secret for a Nightingale by Victoria Holt Read Free Book Online Page B

you!”
    “And now you will have a husband to look after instead. I am deeply hurt.”
    I hugged him and felt a sudden twinge of apprehension. How ill had he been? And why had Head Quarters decided that he should leave India?
    I was so happy. The future loomed ahead, so exciting that I had to warn myself that there was rarely complete perfection in life. I had to look for the worm in the wood, the flaw in the diamond. Nothing could be quite so perfect as it seemed that night when Aubrey asked me to marry him.
    There was so much to talk of, so much to plan. Aubrey was to accompany us to London and see us into our hotel before going on to his home.
    Then it had been decided that my father and I should pay an early visit to Minster St. Clare in Buckinghamshire.
    I was looking forward to the arrival at Tilbury not dreading it as I had anticipated when I had thought it might mean saying goodbye to Aubrey for ever. As for Aubrey himself, he was in a state of euphoria, and I was immensely gratified to know that I had created it.
    So we said au revoir with promises to visit Aubrey’s home in two weeks’ time. Amelia, his sister-in-law, would be de45
     
    lighted to receive us, he was sure. As for his brother, he did not know how he would find him.
    I wondered whether, as his brother was so ill, guests would be welcome in the house, but he assured me that it was a big house and there were plenty of people to look after everything and both his brother and his wife would surely want to meet me.
    We had comfortable rooms in a somewhat old-fashioned hotel close to Piccadilly recommended by Uncle James who used it on his brief visits to London; and on the following day I went house-hunting and my father presented himself at the War Office.
    I found a small house in Albemarle Street which was to be let furnished, and I planned to take my father along to see it at the first opportunity.
    When he came home he seemed quite excited. He was to have a job of some responsibility at the War Office, which he thought would be very demanding. He looked at the house and decided we should take it and move in at the beginning of the next week. I had a few very busy days engaging servants to start with and making arrangements to go into our new home, which we had taken on rental for three months.
    I said: “That will give us time to look round for a real home and if we haven’t found it by then, we can no doubt stay here a little longer.”
    My father said rather sadly, “It will probably be a bachelor’s apartment which I shall need, for you are bent on making a home with someone else.”
    “Weddings take a long time to arrange and I shall be with:
    you for a while. And in any case I shall be visiting you often.
    Buckinghamshire is not so very far away. ” I had found the search quite exciting. I had always been interested in houses. They seemed to have personalities of their own. Some seemed happy houses, others mysterious, some;
    even mildly menacing. My father laughed at my fancifuli ideas; but I really did feel atmospheric sensations quite;
    vividly. J I was pleased, too, that my father was enjoying the War,
    Office. I had feared that after having been on active service he might find work in an office dull. Not so. He was absorbed and I could not help feeling that it had been a good move to bring him home. Sometimes he looked a little tired, but of course he was no longer a young man and that was natural. I wondered now and then about that illness he had had, but he was rather reticent about it and I fancied it disturbed him to talk about it so I did not mention it. He was well now and life was too exciting for me to want to cloud over the brightness, so I assured myself that there was nothing to worry about and that we were all going to be happy ever after.
    We settled into the furnished house, which we found ideal;
    the two servants I had engaged, Jane and Polly, were very good, willing girls. They were sisters who were delighted to have