The Reluctant Widow Read Free

seems best to you,” he said. “It is no concern of mine. But rid your mind of whatever romantic notions it may cherish! Your charge, as you choose to call him, may be induced to accept you, but that is because I can force him to do so and for no other reason. Do not flatter yourself that he will regard you with complaisance! I do not expect you to remain above a week: you need not remain as long, unless you choose to do so.” “Not remain above a week!” she exclaimed. “He cannot be as bad as you would have, me think, sir! It is absurd to speak in such a way! Pardon me, but you should not talk so!” “I wish you to know the truth, to have the opportunity to reconsider your decision.” A good deal dismayed, she could only say, “I must do what I can. I own, I had not supposed—but I am not in a position—in a position lightly to decline—” “No. So, indeed, I apprehended,” he said. “It could not have been otherwise.” She stared at him. “Well! This is frank indeed! I am sure I am at a loss to guess why, having engaged me, you should now be so set on turning me away, sir!”
    At that he smiled, which made his somewhat forbidding countenance appear very much more pleasing. “It is certainly absurd,” he agreed. “You are not what I had expected, ma’am. I must tell you that I think you too young.”
    Her spirits sank. “I made no secret of my age, sir. I am perhaps older than you imagine. I am six and twenty.”
    “You look younger,” he commented.
    “I hope it need not signify, sir. I assure you, I am not without experience.” “You can hardly have had experience of what now lies before you,” he retorted. A dreadful suspicion crossed Miss Rochdale’s mind. “Good heavens, he is not—he surely cannot be—deranged, sir?” she exclaimed.
    “No, he is quite sane,” he answered. “It is brandy, not madness, to which the greater part of his propensity for evil is attributable.”
    “Brandy?” she gasped.
    He raised his brows. “Yes, I thought you had not been told the whole,” he said. “I am sorry. I intended—and indeed ordered—otherwise.”
    Miss Rochdale now realized that not her charge but her employer was mentally deranged. She rose to her feet, saying with a firmness which she hoped concealed her inward alarm, “I think, sir, it would be best that I should present myself without further loss of time to Mrs. Macclesfield.”
    “To whom?” he asked, rather blankly.
    “Your wife!” she said, retreating strategically toward the door. He said with unruffled calm, “I am not married.”
    “Not married?” she cried. “Then—have I been under a misapprehension? Are you not Mr. Macclesfield?”
    “Certainly not,” he replied. “I am Carlyon.”
    He appeared to think that this statement was sufficient to apprise her of all she could possibly wish to know about him. She was wholly bewildered, and could only stammer, “I beg your pardon! I thought—But where, then, is Mrs. Macclesfield?” “I do not think I know the lady.”
    “You do not know her! Is this not her house, sir?” “No,” he said.
    “Oh, there has been some dreadful mistake!” she cried distressfully. “I do not know how it
    can have come about! Indeed, I am very sorry, Mr. Carlyon, but I think I am come to the wrong house!”
    “So it would appear, ma’am.”
    “It is the most mortifying circumstance! I do beg your pardon! But when the servant asked me if I was come in answer to the advertisement I thought—But I should have inquired more particularly!”
    “Did you come in answer to the advertisement?” he interrupted, his brow creasing. “Not mine, I fancy!”
    “Oh, no! I was hired by Mrs. Macclesfield to be governess to her children—more particularly, her little boy.” In spite of herself, she began to laugh. “Oh, dear, could anything be more nonsensical? You may conceive what an effect your words had upon me!” “I imagine you must have supposed me to be mad.”
    “I did. But it