104. A Heart Finds Love Read Free Page A

brought the newspaper in with breakfast and he had opened it so that she could read at a glance what she had written.
    ‘If that does not attract people,’ she thought to herself, ‘then nothing will.’
    She hoped that she would obtain the one thousand pounds she was asking for and not have to reduce it.
    She had learnt that many people, who were buying anything, always expected to get it for less than the seller asked.
    So after the first two or three items she had sold, she always asked a price a little higher than she expected to receive.
    She had, in fact, at the very last moment, increased the price she was asking for the wedding dress and so she would be prepared to reduce it, but, of course, appear reluctant as she did so.
    “Well, I expects,” Brooks was saying, “you’ll have them knocking on the door to have a look at it. But if you asks me, you could have asked for even more than that.”
    “I don’t think anyone spends more on a wedding dress,” Alnina replied. “In fact, I have seen advertisements offering them with a veil and a wreath for half that price.”
    “Yes, but what they be selling ain’t a dress like your Mama’s,” Brooks insisted. “Your father always said it were the prettiest gown in the whole world.”
    Alnina laughed.
    “That is the sort of thing Papa would say. But one thousand pounds is a great deal of money these days and most brides have to buy their whole trousseau for less.”
    “There be brides and brides,” Brooks said. “If you asks me, Miss Alnina, you could have got more than that.”
    “I have not received anything yet,” Alnina replied. “But we will soon find out if you are right, Brooks, and I am wrong.”
    Brooks did not reply.
    But she heard him mutter to himself as he carried her empty tray out of the dining room towards the kitchen.
    *
    She would have been most interested if she had known that at the very moment when she was arguing with Brooks about her advertisement, the Duke of Burlingford was reading The Times in his London house.
    It had been put neatly down on his breakfast table on a silver stand, which had been used by his grandfather.
    He glanced at the headlines, but then he was really thinking how extraordinary it was that he should be seated in a beautiful carved chair at the head of the table.
    He was now ensconced in a house that he had only visited three or four times before it became his.
    In fact, he still felt as if he was in a dream from which he would not wake up.
    He found it quite impossible to believe that he was now actually the Head of the Family and he had never in his wildest dreams thought it would be possible.
    John Ford, as he had been born, had at an early age wanted to travel.
    When he left Eton, where he had a good education, he had rejected his father’s advice that he should go on to a University.
    Instead he had set off to explore the world and he had found it so much more fascinating and educational than any University could have been.
    He had travelled for four years and then he returned home because he learnt that his father was ill.
    His father owned a nice comfortable, medium-sized house in Worcestershire and he was not very interested in anything that took place outside his own County.
    He was, however, an ardent enthusiast for sporting activities. He rode to hounds, had a small but excellent shoot of his own and was a patron of a local cricket team and this he had founded and financed.
    He had only one son with his wife, who was not particularly strong.
    When she died, he was quite content to live on his own with only periodical news of his son.
    He saw very little of the Head of the Family, who was the Duke of Burlingford, the owner of an enormous estate in Sutherland in Scotland as well as a family house in Berkeley Square.
    Once a year the Duke expected his relations to visit him in the huge house which had been given to the first Duke by Charles II for his loyalty and support.
    When John Ford met his