A Scandalous Publication Read Free Page A

all her other bad marks, from her undesirably red hair and freckled nose to her uncompromising character, her delight in books, and her refusal to suffer fools gladly. She was too spirited, too outspoken, and too bookish —what else need be said? Even with the prize of Kimber Park and the Wyndham fortune as an inheritance, she had put paid to her chances of an excellent match by being herself, and by being determined, like the heroines in her beloved books, to marry only for love; now, with her family ruined and her fortune lost, she was likely to remain unmarried forever more.
    She glanced around the library, her favorite room with its dark-green brocade walls and countless shelves of costly volumes. Soon all the books would be gone, sold along with everything else at the auction Christie’s was to hold in a week’s time. Her jewels and wardrobes, and her mother’s, had gone already, sold to meet the more immediate of her father’s huge debts. What a sad irony it was that one of his few recent wins had been the horse that had thrown and killed him; and what a further sad irony it was that the horse had been won from none other than Max Talgarth. This, together with Max’s association with Judith, had made him the very last man Charlotte wished to see as master of Kimber Park, but he had made such a very handsome offer that to refuse would have been the height of folly. Now at least she and her mother would have a modest house in a reasonably acceptable street in London, and they would have a small income upon which to live.
    Tears suddenly filled Charlotte’s eyes. Max Talgarth was wrong for this house, so very wrong, but now it was his, to do with as he pleased.
     

Chapter Two
     
    It was still raining one month later on the day that Charlotte and her mother were to leave Kimber Park. The house seemed very empty now that most of the rooms had been cleared of furniture. Everything had been made ready for the new owner, the items sold at auction having long since gone, and those that Max Talgarth had purchased having been set aside. Those rooms no longer in use had been closed and shuttered, and the passages and staircases now echoed in a strange, hollow way that made everyone whisper. For the servants , life was to go on as before, for although Max had yet to intimate when he intended to take up residence, he had let it be known that he wished to keep the entire complement of staff.
    Mrs. Wyndham’s rather elderly maid, Muriel, was the only one accompanying them to Henrietta Street, and that last morning there were tears in her eyes as she dressed, pushing her sandy-gray hair beneath a fresh white mob cap and smoothing her clean apron and brown dress against her bony little person. She left her room on the top floor and went down to attend her mistress, following a routine that had been her very existence for the last twelve years.
    When Charlotte and her mother had finished dressing, the housemaids were ready and waiting to strip the beds and remove the mattresses, then the footmen dismantled the beds and took them away to be stacked with all the other furniture Max had purchased at the auction. Then the bedrooms were shuttered and the curtains drawn.
    The breakfast room was situated on the eastern side of the house, to catch the morning sun, but this morning, as on so many others this dreary summer, the weather outside was as wet and lowering as could be. The room’s blue brocade walls and sapphire velvet curtains did little to create any cheer, and it was cold enough to warrant a fire in the hearth. The long mahogany sideboard, too heavy by far to be moved from the position it had occupied for some fifty years, had in happier times been laden with fine silver-domed dishes containing everything from cold roast meats to kedgeree, deviled kidneys, eggs of every description, mounds of delicious, crisp bacon, and a pleasing variety of fresh-baked bread; today there was only toast and coffee.
    Mrs. Wyndham had yet to