The Reluctant Earl Read Free Page A

looking at the green fields on either side of the road. 
    Liam broke the silence.  “What was your mother’s maiden name?”
    “It was Jarvis.  At least I know that.”
    “There’s a famous English banking family by the name of Jarvis.  Do you think she might be related to them?”
    “I don’t know,” Simon said fretfully.  “I don’t know anything!  It makes me feel so stupid.”
    “You’re not stupid, boy.  Things have been purposefully kept from you.  Let me look around a bit and see what I can find out.”
    Simon turned to look at Liam’s profile, at the thin, aquiline nose and well-cut mouth Claire had inherited, and felt a rush of relief and gratitude.  “I would appreciate that, Mr. O’Rourke.”
    Liam flicked his whip to keep one of the bays from leaning out and said, “Don’t worry your head too much, Simon.  Enjoy your summer.  We’ll get this sorted out.”
    “Thank you,” Simon said, his gruff voice disguising his emotion.  They spent the rest of the drive discussing the horses Liam had in training.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER TWO
    The following day Simon stood beside the small river in Welbourne woods impatiently skipping stones.  Claire and he had arranged to meet at their usual spot the previous afternoon, when Liam stopped at the cottage so Simon could say hello to Claire and her mother.  As Claire and her parents were going to dine at the squire’s, he had gone on to the abbey.
    “I couldn’t get out of it,” Claire had whispered to him as Simon and her father were returning to the curricle.  “Meet you tomorrow at the glen.”
    He had thought of nothing else all night.  It would be bliss to be alone with her again.  But mixed with the bliss was frustration.  He was too young.  They were too young.  He was finished with school, thank God, but he suspected his father was going to pack him off to Oxford.  All the Radleys had gone to Oxford.  And all his father wanted was for Simon to be out from under his sight.
    When were they going to be allowed to be together?  And what might this inheritance mean to them?
    He heard hoof beats and Claire came riding into the glen on Finbar, the little gray gelding her father had bought for her when she had outgrown her pony.   She flung herself out of her saddle and ran into his arms.  Their lips met in a long kiss. 
    It was so hard to lift his mouth away from her.  The reality of Claire was always so much stronger than his dreams of her when he was gone.
    She said, “I missed you so much.”
    His eyes devoured the face he loved.  Her eyes were huge and brown, with remarkable long black lashes.  Her shining mahogany colored hair was tied as usual at her nape and fell halfway down her back.  She had clear olive skin, a narrow arched nose and lips that he could kiss forever.  She and her father were the ‘black Irish,’ she had once told him – descended in part from the Spanish sailors that had been flung on the shores of southwest Ireland when the Armada had broken up in the sixteenth century.
    “I missed you too,” he returned.
    They said that each time he came home. 
    She stepped a little away and looked him up and down.  “Have you got taller?” she demanded.
    “An inch, perhaps.”
    “Why do you keep growing and I don’t?” she said, woeful as a child deprived of a treat.
    It was an ongoing complaint and it made him smile to hear it again.  He tipped her chin up with his forefinger.  “You’re perfect just the way you are.”  His eyes glinted with mischief.  “Even if you are short.”      
          She tilted her head.  “I love it when you look like that.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like a naughty little boy.”
    His amusement fled.  “I was never a naughty little boy.”
    “I know.”  Her voice was very soft.  “Kiss me again, Simon.”
    He lowered his head and she slid her arms around his waist, pressing