Twin of Ice

Twin of Ice Read Free Page A

Book: Twin of Ice Read Free
Author: Jude Deveraux
Tags: Humor, Fiction, General, Romance, Historical
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Perhaps he won’t find out.”
    “Hah! That pompous, spoiled man will forbid you to participate in anything dealing with the coal miners and, Houston, you’re so used to obeying that you’ll do exactly what he says.”
    “Perhaps I should give up being Sadie after I’m married,” she said with a sigh.
    Suddenly, Blair dropped to her knees on the carpet and took Houston’s hands. “I’m worried about you. You’re not the sister I grew up with. Gates and Westfield are eating away at your spirit. When we were children, you used to throw snowballs with the best of them but now it’s as if you’re afraid of the world. Even when you do something wonderful like drive a huckster wagon, you do it in secret. Oh, Houston—.”
    She broke off at a knock on the door. “Miss Houston, Dr. Leander is here.”
    “Yes, Susan, I’ll be right down.” Houston smoothed her skirt. “I’m sorry you find me so much to your distaste,” she said primly, “but I do know my own mind. I want to marry Leander because I love him.” With that, she swept out of the room, and went downstairs.
    Houston tried her best to push Blair’s words from her mind but she couldn’t. She greeted Leander absently and was vaguely aware of a quarrel going on between Lee and Blair, but she really heard nothing except her own thoughts.
    Blair was her twin, they were closer than ordinary sisters and Blair’s concern was genuine. Yet, how could Houston even think of not marrying Leander? When Leander was eight years old, he’d decided he was going to be a doctor, a surgeon who saved people’s lives, and by the time Houston met him, when he was twelve, Lee was already studying textbooks borrowed from a distant cousin. Houston decided to find out how to be a doctor’s wife.
    Neither wavered from his decision. Lee went to Harvard to study medicine, then to Vienna for further study, and Houston went to finishing schools in Virginia and Switzerland.
    Houston still winced whenever she thought of the argument she and Blair’d had about her choice of schools. “You;’re going to give up an education just so you can learn to set a table, so you can learn how to walk into a room wearing fifty yards of heavy satin and not fall on your face?”
    Blair went to Vassar, then medical school, while Houston went to Miss Jones’s School for Young Ladies where she was put through years of rigorous training in everything from how to arrange flowers to how to stop men from arguing at the dinner table.
    Now, Lee took her arm as he helped her into the buggy. “You look as good as always,” he said close to her ear.
    “Lee,” Houston said, “do you think we find each other…interesting?”
    With a smile, his eyes raked down her body, over the dress that glued itself to her tightly corseted, exaggerated hourglass figure. “Houston, I find you fascinating.”
    “No, I mean, do we have enough to talk about?”
    He raised one eyebrow. “It’s a wonder I can remember how to talk when I’m around you,” he answered as he helped her into his buggy, and drove them the six blocks into the heart of Chandler.

Chapter 2
    Chandler, Colorado, was a small place, only eight thousand inhabitants, but its industries of coal, cattle, sheep, and Mr. Gates’s brewery made it a rich little town. It already had a telephone system and electricity, and, with three train lines through town, it was easy to reach the larger cities of Colorado Springs and Denver.
    The eleven blocks comprising downtown Chandler were covered with buildings that were almost all new and built of stone from the Chandler Stone Works. The greenish gray stone was often carved into intricate patterns for use as cornices for the Western Victorian style buildings.
    Scattered outside the town were houses in varied styles of Queen Anne and High Victorian. At the north end of town, on a small rise, was Jacob Fenton’s house, a large brick Victorian structure that until a few years ago had been Chandler’s largest

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