Simply Love by Mary Balogh Read Free Book Online Page B

bearing to proclaim the great elevation of her rank. She was a great favorite in the nursery.
    When she had arrived there soon after breakfast with Lady Aidan and Lady Rosthorn, both of whom Anne had met several years before in Cornwall, she had gone out of her way to make Anne feel at home, drawing her up from her curtsy, linking an arm through hers, and leading her away into the darkened room where her young baby slept in his crib, his two little hands curled into fists on either side of his head as if he fully intended swinging them as soon as he awoke. She had even somehow worked into the conversation the fact that she was the daughter of a country gentleman who had been forced to supplement his income by teaching at the village school and that she herself had been teaching part-time at that same school when she had met the duke at a house party she had really not wanted to attend.
    â€œIt can be an abomination, Miss Jewell,” she had added as if she were really saying nothing of any great significance, “to find oneself stuck in a country manor surrounded by strangers who might possibly think themselves superior and wishing that one were anywhere else on earth but right there. I tried at first to remain aloof from it all, observing satirically from a shadowed corner. But Wulfric found me there and provoked me, the horrid man, and I emerged from that corner in order to preserve my very self-respect.” She had laughed lightly.
    Wulfric, Anne gathered, must be the Duke of Bewcastle.
    And she had, she had also realized, just been challenged into emerging from her own shadowed corner, the nursery, in order to preserve her self-respect.
    But the duchess, she thought, had never borne an illegitimate son.
    Now the duchess linked an arm through Anne’s again.
    â€œI will make sure that you have been presented to everyone, Miss Jewell,” she said. “And here is Wulfric first.”
    Even if everyone in the room had still been a stranger, she would immediately have known the identity of the man who was coming toward her, Anne was convinced. Tall, dark, and austerely handsome, he was also the consummate aristocrat—aloof and dignified, with a powerful presence. And here she was, an ex-governess, an unwed mother, an uninvited guest in his home—and about to dine at his table.
    She would have turned and fled if the duchess had not had an arm linked through her own, she believed.
    Or perhaps not. She did have some pride.
    â€œWulfric,” the duchess said, “here is Miss Jewell at last. This is my husband, the Duke of Bewcastle, Miss Jewell.”
    Anne curtsied. She half expected that the next moment she would be banished into outer darkness.
    â€œYour grace,” she murmured.
    He inclined his head to her and she noticed his long fingers close about the handle of a jeweled quizzing glass, though he did not raise it. It was somehow a terrifying gesture.
    â€œMiss Jewell,” he said. “Her grace and I were sadly remiss yesterday in not welcoming you personally to Glandwr. You will, perhaps, be good enough to forgive us. I trust you and your son have been made comfortable and will enjoy your stay here.”
    They were gracious words, but his strange silver eyes did not smile.
    â€œShe has been busy in the nursery all day, Wulfric, breaking up fights and organizing games,” the duchess said, smiling brightly at him as if he were the warmest of mortals.
    â€œI see no bruises, ma’am,” his grace said with perhaps the merest glimmering of humor. “But perhaps our nephews and nieces were merely warming up today for worse to come tomorrow. And perhaps it is as well for your health that our son is still but an infant in the cradle. We have great hopes of his keeping alive the Bedwyn reputation for hellery in the years to come.”
    The duchess laughed.
    And yes, Anne decided, there was definitely humor in his words. And she liked the way he had referred to his child