Love's Way

Love's Way Read Free Page B

Book: Love's Way Read Free
Author: Joan Smith
Tags: Regency Romance
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June waned into July, the heat rose, the old earl at Carnforth Hall declined, and still there was no firm announcement of any approaching nuptials. There was soon an announcement of a much more distressing nature to plague us, but it had nothing to do with Edward or Emily or marriage.
     

Chapter Two

 
    Ambledown (my home, if I failed to mention it) is located just at the northern tip of Lake Grasmere, right at the heart of the Lake District. Windermere, just below us, is thought to be prettier by some, but I prefer the wilder, craggier fells of home. Being right at the hub of the whole delightful region, Grasmere has fallen due to most of the unwanted tourist activity. We blame the majority of this on a certain Captain Wingdale, retired officer of the Royal Navy. His pockets are heavy with prize money taken during the late wars. It is his aim to make them even heavier by destroying our whole town and neighbourhood with his business activities. Bad enough he threw up a spurious Elizabethan inn, whose half timbers stand out like a sore thumb in this area that has still a strong Nordic flavour. Bad enough indeed that every cit and clerk who can afford the journey comes with a carriageful of children to fill his rooms and our streets, and to make such a racket into the night and on the Sabbath that the local inhabitants have no peace. Captain Wingdale is in the process of modernizing us by holding assemblies in the largest room of his hotel—not monthly, not even weekly, but nightly throughout the summer for the delight of his clients and the less discriminating of the local inhabitants.
    There are some folks broad-minded enough to forgive him all these atrocities, for while he has driven up prices in the local shops to ridiculous heights, he has brought more custom than usual to the village. Rooms are let by many a spinster and widow who would otherwise be deprived of this little additional income. Tea shops flourish; souvenirs are imported from London and stamped with the names of the various lakes; pamphlets abound bruiting our charms to the travellers. As Ambledown is two miles from the village, even I was large-hearted enough to forgive Wingdale, but his latest crime neither I nor anyone else for miles around can condone.
    The crime (and the distressing announcement referred to earlier) is this Captain Wingdale has taken into his head to create an entirely new town. It is to be located between the present village and Ambledown—right on our doorstep, you see. He has used the coincidence of there being several places ending in the termination “dale” to name the town after himself, Wingdale, ignoring the fact that Dunnerdale, Grizedale, and so on are not named after people, but are in fact dales—valleys. Wingdale is nothing of the sort. It will be built on a slight incline. By some underhanded means he snapped up several acres of land outside of Grasmere and was busy every day trying to seize the rest of it. It would not surprise me in the least if he has set his greedy sights on Ambledown.
    Indeed, the plan of his new town is incomplete without it. Our ancestral home forms the focal point of the road that runs north from Grasmere, with Berwick Pike towering behind it. Ambledown would be incorporated into the town even if Edward manages to hold on to it—a thing by no means certain in our perilous financial state. The Plans for Wingdale are on prominent display in the window of Wingdale Hause. In his sublime ignorance, the Captain mistook the old Nordic “hause” to mean house, or so I assume. It means a narrow pass, in case you are interested. Wingdale Hause is his spurious Elizabethan inn, right on the main street. He pulled down three shops and the existing inn to build it. The inn was of great historical interest, being several hundred years old, but Wingdale does not even profess to have any interest in history, unless it is recent enough to concern his own naval exploits.
    When you have been accustomed to

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