Love's Way Read Free

local hero for a week or so, which is perhaps how I came to remember Jack Gamble at all.
    “I believe he did. Fancy your remembering that. His other exploits would not be known to a child, however.”
    “I am no longer a child, Auntie.”
    “It never ceases to amaze me how well-reared young ladies are so eager to hear tales of wrong-doing. It was not spoken of a great deal hereabouts, but Lady Carnforth was still alive at the time, and a friend of mine. She told me the story. Jack seduced his cousin Wilbur’s fiancée. That same year he won the fell-race, it was. He was popular with the ladies after that, and Millie Henderson was always a ninnyhammer anyway.”
    “You mean he actually got her in trouble?”
    “Enough trouble that Wilbur felt free to call off the match. And then Jack hadn’t the integrity to offer the girl marriage but sneaked off to India and left her in the lurch. I imagine it is the only reason he ever went, for he had a decent home and prospects from his father. Nothing so grand as Carnforth Hall you know, but a respectable estate. A mine, I think his papa owned, like Carnforth. Though it might have been sheep, as he won the fell-race. It is usually won by a sheep farming family.”
    I regarded her with an unbelieving eye, for I knew perfectly well that Millie Henderson had been happily married to another gentleman for some years, as she would not have been had she been termed ruined.
    “Old Carnforth patched up some match for her,” Nora explained. “The old aristocratic families arrange these matters. In any case, Jack Gamble was never any good. He was a wild young buck—gaming, wenching, gambling, fighting, and riding. We were glad to see the back of him, I can tell you. So if he is to inherit Carnforth Hall, it hardly matters whether the estate goes to the courts now or a year from now. Of more importance to us is that Lady Emily hasn’t a penny to her name. Edward cannot offer for her. Pity. Even if she had five thousand ... But with the mortgage at home standing so high, it is not to be thought of.”
    As Nora’s eyes were not required for netting in the carriage, she could spare me a glance, and as mine were required for driving, I could ignore it. I knew, though, that she regarded me hopefully. If I accepted Tom Carrick, of course, Edward would have one less encumbrance. Or perhaps two, if Nora came to live with Tom and me.
    “I don’t consider it a total tragedy,” I said. “Outside of her right to the title of ‘Lady’, and of course a pretty face, Emily has not much to offer. She is not the best manager the countryside has seen, is she?”
    “To be sure she is not, Chloe. You are, but you would continue to manage family affairs until ... as you always have done.’’
    “A new mistress might have something to say about that,” I pointed out.
    “Not Lady Emily. She would not care two straws for it. It really is a great pity,” she repeated, then cast her gaze about the countryside, to nod and smile at the blue-gray hills in the distance, patched with green and dotted with sheep.
    “At least Edward has not fallen madly in love with her,” I mentioned.
    “If she keeps hanging about the way she has been doing, he soon will,” she forecast gloomily.
    She was right. Lady Emily kept on coming, at least twice, often four times, a week throughout that spring and summer. She caught Edward at home often enough that her beauty penetrated his consciousness. He was half in love with Lady Emily and half in love with love, as becomes a poet. He was not so fond of her as to curtail his jaunts over to Rydal Mount to meet with Mr. Wordsworth’s circle.
    It seems to me that a man wishing to do honour to our beautiful Lake District (as our northwestern corner of England has been misnamed since the poets brought it into fashion) should do so with brush and canvas. All these poets have accomplished is to have us overrun with tourists who come in carriages to glance at what they call the