Silken Secrets Read Free

had been only four years old at the time, but the nightmare still came occasionally to darken her dreams.
    She remembered standing right there by the beadle and Miss Monroe in the office at the parish home while they discussed her fate as though she were a stick of wood with, no ears and no feelings. The office was a dreary green, with a plain wooden floor, the narrow planks turning up at the edges. Miss Monroe had worn a matron’s white apron over her blue gown.
    It had been late autumn, just the dreariest time of the year. Her papa’s relatives had come for the funeral, but they were not close relatives. With children of their own to raise, they none of them wanted to be saddled with another. So, it was the parish home for her, and sleeping in the monkish dormitory surrounded by strange children, many of them older than she, all of them terrifying to a newly orphaned child.
    It was only to be for a few weeks till her mama’s relatives could be contacted. “They didn’t even answer my letter. I never heard of such a thing,” old Miss Monroe scolded to the beadle that morning. “Her mama was supposed to be so well connected—her sister married to a lord. Ha! I never believed it. It’s obvious no one wants her. We’ll have to keep her here, I suppose. Another mouth to feed. And look at her—ugly as sin. No hope of anyone taking her off our hands.”
    She hadn’t really been ugly. It was the week of crying that had left her eyes swollen and red and her face shrunken in terror. Her hair, too, was unkempt, and the orphan gowns were horrid worsted things.
    Then, while a helpless four-year-old child contemplated a life locked up in this prison with strangers, Uncle Edwin had come pouncing into the room.
    “Where is she?” he demanded. “Where is my niece, Mary Anne Judson?”
    Mary Anne had looked at him with her big brown eyes pooled with tears. He didn’t look comical to her. Not then, not now. Never. He was her Sir Galahad.
    “You’re looking at her. And who might you be, sir?” Miss Monroe demanded.
    Uncle had drawn himself up to his full five feet six inches and announced in that supercilious way he still used occasionally, “You are speaking to Lord Edwin Horton of Horton Hall in Kent, madam. Brother to the Earl of Exholme. I have come to fetch my niece home.”
    Then he had unstiffened and come toward her, holding a pretty doll. That was thoughtful of him, to bring a doll. “So this is Mary Anne. A pretty little thing, ain’t she? Takes after her mama. The Beatons all had those lovely brown eyes, my own wife included.”
    It was like balm to her bruised spirit. She loved him on the spot, and she had no occasion ever to think her love was misplaced, even if he did sometimes forget her birthday. What did a present matter? He had given her a home and himself for a family.
    She shook the thought away. May the first. Anything might happen on a girl’s birthday, and to be ready for this nebulous possibility of pleasure, Mary Anne decided to wear her good sprigged muslin. She splashed cold water on her face and shivered into the pretty rose-sprigged gown. It was really too cold for muslin yet, but with that sun shining, it would soon warm up.
    She brushed her chestnut curls back from her face and caught them in a basket with the nacre comb Uncle had given her three birthdays ago. Last year and the year before he had forgotten her birthday, but perhaps this year he’d remember.
    She rubbed her cheeks to give them a blush of color and examined her face in the mirror. Twenty-four years old! My, she was getting on. She really didn’t look much different from last year. Her brown eyes sparkled as brightly. Her cheeks were still full. The simple country life held at bay the ravages of time, but one of these years she’d have to start rouging. Then the hair would silver, and soon her life would be over, before it had properly begun. Oh, dear, and she had felt so happy when she awoke.
    Mary Anne wrapped a white