Suzanne Robinson by The Rescue Read Free Book Online Page A

to tie his shoes.
    And she tried hard not to take her feelings out on him when her mother would gaze upon John Harold with rapture and say, “My dear little John has rescued me from the catastrophe of a daughter.” Or, “If I hadn’t had a son, my life would be a blank.”
    In the years that followed, three more children were born to the Dane family. One was a boy, and hisdeath was much lamented. Two were girls, whose appearances and deaths were barely noted. But the family title and name were safe, for John Harold was strong and would continue the Dane lineage.
    William Harold, Prim’s father, never lamented her birth as had her mother. Sir William was too busy attending to his horses, his gun dogs, his rents, and his liquor and gambling. However, Sir William’s most abiding interest was in the position of his family and name. In his library, the most valued books were those mentioning the Dane name. The most precious documents were those proving how old the title was, and that there wasn’t a draper or cobbler in the entire lineage.
    And his daughter? Prim was certain that her father loved her. He had said so, in that offhand, fashionable way of his. He had said it in passing, as he was on his way to his club for an evening of cards and liquor. “You’ll be a comfort to your mother in her old age,” Sir William had said. Prim had rejoiced in her father’s approval. Her spirits had been high for weeks.
    Prim worshipped her parents as one did remote gods on top of mountains. She gave her love to her nanny, Mrs. Peace, and to John Harold. Left to herself much of the time—her company hardly ever necessary to anyone—Prim grew up creating her own friends and occupations in daydreams and pursuing adventures through her studies and reading.
    By the time she was eighteen, Prim was comfortable with her place in the family. She came first with Nanny Peace, and first in the family—after her father, John Harold, and her mother, that is. She was the onewhose engagements were canceled should anyone else need a carriage. She was the one whose preferences were asked last, if at all. Her place was to listen in admiration to her mother’s social triumphs, to John Harold’s tales of hunting rabbits and learning to jump a horse.
    Prim sometimes offered little stories of her own, such as those of how she mastered French pronunciation, learned a piano sonata, or discovered a manuscript in the vast collection in the library. But her stories never seemed as interesting as the others. If they had been, her father wouldn’t have interrupted so often. Her mother wouldn’t have gotten that vacant look when Prim began, and John Harold wouldn’t have made fun of her. By the time her mother died, giving birth to a stillborn daughter, Prim had ceased almost entirely to recount her own adventures to the family.
    The growing chill in the bathwater distracted Prim and called her attention to her wrinkled fingers and toes. She washed her hair, left the bath, and dressed. It was impossible to put on her old clothes. She couldn’t bear the idea of the soiled fabric next to her clean skin. She donned the traveling dress and vowed to repay its owner, should she live.
    To distract herself while her hair dried, Prim found her old cloak and removed the book that had lain within it all this time. She slipped the small tome from the lining with exaggerated care, for the book was centuries old. It was an illuminated manuscript she had borrowed from her father’s library, quite valuable. Some might say she had no right to take it, as thehouse and its contents were John Harold’s. But her brother hardly set foot in the library. He didn’t even know the book existed, while Prim loved it and knew its contents by heart. It was called
The Book of Hours of Yolande de Navarre
.
    Ten years ago she’d come upon it while exploring the library, and she’d been studying illuminated manuscripts ever since. She dreamed of one day being able to write a