Move Heaven and Earth Read Free

Jasper had already proved he felt protective of the family. Perhaps the tale of the ghost had been nothing but a fiction to scare her away.
    “What’s that?” She pointed at a smudge of dark smoke that rose along the horizon.
    “The mill.”
    “What mill?”
    “The cotton mill.”
    “On Clairmont lands?” She stared at the smoke, tracing it until it dissipated in the high winds that tore the clouds to tatters. “Impossible. Dukes don’t indulge in trade.” Surely not the pleasant, handsome Garth. “Only merchants do. Then they buy a barony and put their daughter on the marriage mart, seeking a title to match their fortunes.”
    “Well, I don’t know about that, miss. I only know about His Grace.”
    What a clam! she thought in exasperation. She might as well have indulged in curiosity. Jasper wouldn’t tell her a thing.
    The gig rattled along the rutted track. They drove through a cultivated hollow where men plowed the soil and pressed seed in place, then into a pleasant country village with a few shops and homes. It looked clean and prosperous, the kind of place Sylvan had imagined existed but had never seen.
    The blacksmith examined her as they drove by, then raised a hand in welcome, and she waved back.
    A homecoming.
    “We’re starting the ascent to the manor.” Jasper pointed with his whip. “If ye’ll look up as we go around this corner, ye’ll catch yer first glimpse.”
    She did, and no etiquette could stop her exclamation of “Mercy!”
    The house straddled the rocky hilltop like a Gothic battleship defying the elements. Each succeeding duke evidently had a different idea of style and good taste, and some of them must have been, as Jasper claimed, mad. The hodgepodge of chimneys, windows, and carvings tried but could not distract from the exterior jumble of gray stone, sandstone, and marble.
    “It looks,” Sylvan said in wonder, “as if a giant child kicked over its blocks, then tried to reassemble them.”
    “Most visitors are in awe.” Jasper’s spine straightened beneath the black coat.
    “In awe.” Immense stands of horse chestnut and mountain ash whisked past, then the hedges. They rounded the bend and the house showed itself in its full glory. Nothing about it resembled her father’s new house, which had been designed and decorated by the finest craftsmen in England, but somehow Clairmont Court welcomed her—her, the daughter of a merchant. They pulled up to a series of broad steps that led to the terrace and then into the house, and she stared at the towering structure. “ I am in awe. I have never seen anything remotely resembling this. It’s chaotic. It’s barbaric. It’s—”
    A wooden chair crashed through a tall, narrow ground-floor window and skidded across the terrace.
    “Likely to get worse,” Jasper finished for her. “He must have heard you were coming.”
    Boys ran to the horses’ heads while a deep voice raged from within the house. “A woman? You got me a hen-hearted woman?” A glass statue followed the chair, but through a different window, and shards sparkled like rain on a cloudless day.
    Jasper leaped from his perch and ran up the steps, forgetting his duty to Sylvan, but she didn’t mind. All the better to get a grasp on the situation.
    Bracing herself, she descended from the carriage. She pulled off her gloves and her cornet bonnet, ran her hands through her hair, and fluffed it out.
    The ragged edges of one window broke in a series of shattering protests as a stick, probably a cane, punched it out. “What the hell do you think to accomplish with a woman?”
    “Give me that!” The sound of a scuffle carried clearly through the open window.
    “That’s right, steal from a crippled man.”
    “If you’d wait to meet her…”
    Sylvan recognized Garth’s voice, but more than that, she recognized the other voice. When she had known it before, it had been lightly contemptuous, unwillingly attracted. Now the tone had changed, but she remembered it