A Lady's Wish Read Free Page A

it was too late, don’t you?” she muttered to the recalcitrant prong. “But you will see, I will . . . Ah . . .” The pliers grasped just so, and she felt the certainty of it in her fingertips. “Oh . . .” Her breaths came quick and short, her teeth clenching. “Oo . . .”
    “Tricky! A letter has arrived for you from Oliver’s solicitors.”
    The pliers slipped, glancing off Patricia’s thumb with a scrape of skin. Glaring at the delicate band of gold and diamonds fixed in the ring clamp, she reached for a cloth and enclosed her thumb in it.
    “Thank you, Calanthia. You may leave it on the table.” She glanced at her younger sister then returned her attention to the array of tools beside her. She hadn’t any smaller pliers, and this particular ring would not bear anything larger.
    “Didn’t you receive a letter from them only last week?” Calanthia set the envelope at Patricia’s elbow and plopped down in the soft chair beside her stool. There was not space in the chamber for more than the three pieces of furniture and her work chest. But she needn’t any more space in which to make the rings. Only solitude.
    Solitude was hard-won in the Morgan household.
    “Your nephew’s estate requires a great deal of managing.” She ran her fingertips through her tools, trusting. They often found what they needed best when she allowed them to feel their way naturally. “How happy I might have been as a tinker’s daughter.”
    “Don’t say that near the dowager. She despises tinkers.” Calanthia twirled a short strand of shimmering carroty hair between her fingers. “She despises all tradesmen. A man from the butcher’s came around the other day and she nearly took a strap to him, though I haven’t any idea what the poor fellow could have said to send her flying into the boughs like that.”
    That they had not paid their bills in a month and he would cease delivering to the stylish London townhouse of young Sir John Morgan if his mother would not deliver some coin in return.
    “My mother-in-law is of a sensitive nature.” Her fingers paused. The Swiss file! She would shave the nasty little prong into submission.
    “Aren’t you going to open it?”
    “Not now, dear.” She set the file to the ring. It would be tricky . . . “And please, Callie, do not let Lady Morgan hear you calling me that again. She believes it is beneath me.”
    “But you don’t. May I open it?”
    “Be my guest.” It was probably time Calanthia understood the straits in which Patricia’s sons were now. Poor handling of Oliver’s funds by his former solicitors while he served in Spain had depleted the estate. Only now, after three and a half years of careful planning and the dedicated work of a new steward, was it returning slowly to order.
    A pinch established itself between her shoulders and worked its way up her neck.
    She had hoped to remain in London until funds would come from the countryside. But this news of the butcher boded ill. They must soon remove again to the remote estate upon which Oliver had sequestered her for five years, until he perished in Spain and she had been free to move to London as she had long desired.
    She glanced at Calanthia unfolding the pages and her heart caught. Her energetic young sister filled the house with good spirit. But Patricia could not afford to bring her out into society as she deserved. Callie must go live with their brother, Timothy, and his wife. She could not very well throw out Oliver’s nasty mother or dear old maiden aunt, after all.
    She returned her attention to the ring. The diamonds were barely chips. But they were all she could afford.
    It would be the last one. This she must also give up, her single passion other than her sons. Her only passions since she had relinquished any hope of ever experiencing any other sort of passion. The sort of passion of which she had once dreamed.
    The pinch became a pain.
    “Mama! Mama! Ramsay has bit me again!”
    Two small