The Secret Pearl by Mary Balogh Read Free Book Online Page A

began in the great domed hall at the front of the house with its clerestory lantern high, just below the dome, flooding the room with light, and the dome itself painted with soaring angels. A gallery ran the circle below the lantern.
    “An orchestra sits up there on grand occasions,” the housekeeper explained. “When there is a ball, the doors to the longgallery and saloon are kept open to make one grand ballroom and promenade. You will see it if it rains the day of her grace’s ball. It is to be outdoors by the lake, and we will be invited, Miss Hamilton, it being an outdoor affair. But it will be moved indoors if the weather is inclement, of course.”
    Fleur looked up and tried to imagine an orchestra sitting up there and music echoing around the circular pillared hall. She imagined crowds of people dressed in their evening finery, bright and laughing and dancing. And she smiled. Oh, she was going to be very happy. Despite what Mrs. Laycock had hinted about the duchess and Lady Pamela’s nurse, she was going to be happy. How could she not be? She had had a glimpse of hell and had survived it.
    The long gallery ran the whole length of one of the wings, along the front of the house, one side of it consisting entirely of long windows and ancient Roman busts set in niches. The coved plasterwork frieze and ceiling gave an impression of great height and splendor. The long wall opposite the windows was hung with portraits in gilded frames.
    “His grace’s family from generations back,” Mrs. Laycock said. “You would need the master himself to explain it all to you, Miss Hamilton. There is nothing about Willoughby that he does not know.”
    Fleur identified a Holbein, a Van Dyck, a Reynolds. It must be wonderful, she thought, to have such a line of ancestors to picture in one’s mind. The Duke of Ridgeway, Mrs. Laycock told her, was the eighth duke of his line.
    “We are all waiting for an heir,” she said, her voice turning a little stiff. “But so far there has been only Lady Pamela.”
    The offices and most of the guest rooms were behind the long gallery, Fleur was told, though she was not taken there.
    The great saloon was on the central axis behind the hall, two stories high, its wall hangings of crimson Utrecht velvet, the heavy furniture arranged neatly around the perimeter of the room upholstered in the same material. The great pedimenteddoorcases and the cornice and mantel were gilded, the ceiling painted with a scene from some mythological battle that Mrs. Laycock could not identify. Large landscape paintings in heavy frames hung on the walls.
    The dining room, the drawing room, the library, other rooms, and the private family apartments were in the other wing, the one that balanced the gallery wing.
    Fleur was awed by it all. She had grown up in a grand house. Indeed her father had been its owner until his death in an inn fire with her mother when Fleur was eight years old. Both the house and his title had passed to his cousin, Matthew’s father, and she had become a mere ward of the master, kindly though carelessly treated by him, unwanted and resented by his wife and daughter, ignored by Matthew until recent years.
    But Heron House was not one of the great showpieces of England. Willoughby Hall evidently was. And despite her regret over the lost dream of a cozy manor and a small family group, she felt excited. She was to live in this magnificent mansion. She was to be a part of its busy life, responsible for the education of the duke and duchess’s young daughter.
    Good fortune was to be with her, after all, it seemed. Perhaps she was to have a small glimpse of heaven to balance her other recent experiences.
    “I would take you walking in the park,” the housekeeper said, “but I can see that you are weary, Miss Hamilton. You must go upstairs and rest for a while. Perhaps her grace will wish to speak with you later and perhaps you will be expected to become acquainted with Lady Pamela.”
    Fleur