The Forced Bride by Sara Craven Read Free Book Online

hot drink I won’t specify the flavour, as everything tastes like dishwater.’
    Emily wrinkled her nose. ‘Thanks, my love, but no thanks.’ She hesitated. ‘Have you told your aunt and uncle yet that
    Mrs Whipple left I bet they’re devastated after all these years. I know how I’d feel if Penny gave notice.’
    ‘I haven’t said anything yet. They’re having such a great time on their trip, I don’t want to spoil things. And I’ll hire
    someone else before they get back.’
    Left alone, Emily looked around her. The drawing room at High Gables had always been a gracious room, with its
    beautiful Chinese carpet and pastel furnishings, but since the housekeeper’s departure it was beginning to look shabby
    and unloved. Bare too, she thought, with faint puzzlement. The Georgian candlesticks were missing from the mantelpiece
    and the bow-fronted cabinet containing Celia Aubrey’s prized collection of Meissen figurines seemed half-empty.
    It still seemed incredible that Mrs Whipple should have left while her employers were on their holiday of a lifetime, visiting
    relatives and old friends on a leisurely trip that would take them all round the world.
    And even worse that her place had been taken by Tracey Mason, even temporarily, who’d been sacked as a barmaid
    from the Red Lion for poor timekeeping and general laziness.
    And with no one to keep an eye on her except Simon, who was house-sitting in the Aubreys’ absence and running his
    own import business from High Gables at the same time.
    But, although he might jib at Tracey’s coffee, manlike, he probably didn’t notice unpolished furniture and smeared
    windows, or tally the amount of breakages.
    I hope he does look for a permanent replacement for her soon, Emily thought with a sigh, because the house is beginning
    to look really sad now.
    As though its pulse had stopped beating. And that wouldn’t have happened in Mrs Whipple’s day.
    Much as Emily had grieved for her father, she’d been determined, after his death, to see that the Manor remained just as
    it had been, with all the gracious charm he’d loved, setting her face resolutely against any suggestions of further
    modernisation. And, although it galled her to admit it, Raf Di Salis had accepted her stance and allowed her to have her
    way.
    She got up restively and went to the window. I don’t want to give him credit, she thought, but in this case I have to. He’s
    fulfilled his part of the bargain. And I—I haven’t made waves. Or, not until now.
    She sometimes wondered if she hadn’t been pressured into becoming his wife—if he’d simply acted as her
    trustee—whether they could have managed some semblance of a working relationship.
    In the months before the bombshell of her father’s terminal illness had burst on her, she might not have welcomed Raf’s
    visits but she’d almost become accustomed to them.
    And when she’d been summoned home from school in the middle of the summer term to the news that Sir Travers had
    suddenly collapsed, she’d been almost glad to find him there and had come almost insensibly to rely on his quiet, almost
    impersonal kindness in the trauma of the weeks that followed.
    An inoperable brain tumour, the doctors had told her, their faces compassionate. And only a matter of time…
    ‘I’ve changed my will,’ Sir Travers said one afternoon when she was sitting with him. ‘You’ll still inherit everything I have
    to leave, my dearest, but not until you’re twenty-one and better able to cope with that kind of responsibility.
    ‘In the meantime, however, I’ve created a trust and your affairs will be administered by Leonard Henshaw.’ He paused.
    ‘And also by Rafaele.’
    The breath caught in her throat. ‘Oh, no, surely not.’ The protest was instinctive. ‘Mr Henshaw I can understand, if you
    think this trust is really necessary, but Count Di Salis is—practically a stranger,’ she added stiltedly.
    ‘I thought that lately you’d become