Silver Angel Read Free Page B

beforehand, and it was his wealth that had been left to Chantelle. Charles had in fact left England nearly thirty years ago, escaping debtors’ prison in the process.
    You wouldn’t know it to look at him now. Big, pale, looking older than his forty-nine years, with the stamp of the Burkes on him in his brown hair and blue eyes. He was done up in the finest of fashions, as was his family. And they all exuded the confidence and condescension of the newly prosperous.
    There was Charles’ red-haired wife, Alice, who, according to the tardy solicitor’s report, was the daughter of a tavern owner in Virginia, a tavern where Charles had been no more than an employee. Two of their daughters were present: Marsha, fourteen, and Jane, who was the same age as Chantelle, homely-looking girls with their mother’s red hair and hazel eyes not helping to improve their plain looks. There was an older, married daughter, too, but she had elected to remain in America with a new husband, her second, according to the solicitor’s report.Charles’ son, Aaron, had brought his wife, Rebecca, and their two young children to England, and they were all present, too.
    And to think if her aunt hadn’t lived near the ocean, Chantelle would have returned sooner to this bunch of interlopers who had taken over her home. She might even have come to like them, especially the younger children, who were rather awed by everything around them. She would have introduced them to the beach below Dover cliffs, which had been her playground as a child. Gathering shells, swimming, sailing with her father, exploring the caves, or just sitting on the cliffs, sometimes for hours at a time, waiting to sight a passing ship, had been the essence of her childhood years.
    Yes, if the beach hadn’t been within walking distance of her aunt’s cottage, she would have missed it too much and come home, maybe before Charles got it into his head that he could marry her off to just anybody, and that anybody was Cyrus Wolrige, a man old enough to be her grandfather.
    He was present, too, an old lecher who leered at her throughout the entire interview. She knew him. He lived not a quarter mile away from her. She had seen him often in church, snoring through the sermons, ogling the young women afterward in the churchyard. Emmy, her maid, had always called him a dirty old man.
    And here Charles’ very first words to her had been: “Ah, Chantelle, my dear. Meet your fiancé, Mr. Wolrige. You’ll be married in the morning.”
    Chantelle’s reaction was to laugh at the absurdity of it. Cyrus Wolrige wasn’t offended, though. He just sat there smiling, supremely confident that by tomorrow she would be his bride. His look gave her the chills and sobered her instantly.
    Chantelle rounded on her cousin, violet eyes impaling him. “You are joking, sir, and in bad taste.”
    “I assure you the holy state of matrimony is nothing to joke about,” he told her.
    She had gathered her breeding around her like a cloak to keep from shouting at him. “Then I assure you, sir, that I refuse Mr. Wolrige’s suit.”
    “You can’t, my dear,” Charles replied with a tight smile and an apologetic nod to Mr. Wolrige. “I have already accepted for you.”
    He went on to impress on her that she had no say in it, that they didn’t need her permission in order to see her married, that because she was underage, her guardian’s permission was all that was required.
    It was too much. They all sat there staring at her in different degrees of gloating pleasure, except Aaron, who actually seemed resentful of the situation. And Chantelle found out why later from Emmy.
    Emmy had originally accompanied her to Norfolk but had stayed no more than a month, returning to Dover when her mother took sick. And since Ellen’s cottage was really too small for three people, she had returned to work here later, tending to the new ladies of the house.
    She brought Chantelle a dinner tray that night and stayed long