No Choice but Surrender Read Free

had always smelled of orange blossom. Brienne had an unpleasant memory of that room. She had had a nightmare and had run to find her mother, but her mother hadn't been in her room. The maid had come to put Brienne to bed again, but the servant's explanation that her mother had duties in another room had left her feeling even more frightened and alone.
    Brienne looked down at her mended brown mitts and shook her head. Despite her memories and her mother's accounts of Osterley , she had still been unprepared for its greatness. She had been overwhelmed by the magnificent house as soon as she entered its gates. The very fact that she was its only resident, aside from the servants, gave it that much more command over her. Day after day, she walked through the elaborate rooms, more as a servant than as the daughter of Lord Oliver, the eighth Earl of Laborde . She found it ironic that she, small and shabby, was his only claim to manhood and the only bearer of his name.
    Her mother's stories hadn't always been truthful. She twisted uncomfortably on the cold marble bench. Her thoughts turned to a miniature stowed in a secret panel of her bedroom chest of drawers. She had found the miniature in a trunk at "an old merchant's house in Tenby right after her mother had died. It was a picture of a man's angelic profile, painted neatly on a thin sheet of ivory. He was young and very handsome, but his beauty had not made her gasp. Rather, what the miniature had seemed to imply was a greater shock.
    It was something Brienne had wondered about for years. Had her mother ever been in love? She knew her mother had never loved the earl. Brienne's father had proven himself unworthy of love. So who was this beautiful man in the miniature? she had asked herself. Was he a distant cousin who even now pined for her mother? Or was he a sea captain who kept Grace Morrow in his thoughts even though he might be clear on the other side of the world?
    Holding the miniature to her breast, Brienne had clung to her romantic fancies. There was comfort in believing her mother had known love after all. That she hadn't gone through her short life having known only one man, Oliver Morrow, who had treated her more as an ornament for his precious Osterley than as a woman who could be hurt by harsh words and rough hands. Though Brienne knew there would have been consequences had her mother had a relationship with another man, she chose not to dwell on those. In the distant corners of her mind, she thought she herself bore a likeness to the gentleman in the picture. But then, she told herself sternly, perhaps she was reading more into the picture than was warranted. The only thing she knew for sure was that the miniature had meant a lot to her mother. It had been important enough to keep all these years, and for that reason it had been a precious find.
    That search for valuables had been necessary for more than just personal reasons. The creditors had come to call. A tuppence pending for a long-ago-worn-out bolt of cloth and a shilling owed for a long-ago-eaten side of pork had added up. Not long after that ,   she realized she would have to leave Wales.
    There had been long sleepless nights when she'd been overwhelmed with doubts and fears. She'd lain awake in the top room and stared at the arched rafters, holding the precious miniature in her cold palm. Now and then she'd risen, only to find small relief in opening the leaden mullioned windows to the night air. Finally she'd made a decision. There would be no joy in her new home. She had shuddered at the thought of a chance meeting with the man she knew as her father. But she really had no choice. She had nowhere else to go.
    Being forced to move, she had had to part with many of their treasured belongings—several of her mother's pearl pins, all her mother's gowns and most of her own, and all their wonderful books, including volumes of Shakespeare and Chaucer. But there had been two things Brienne had refused to part