My True Love

My True Love by Karen Ranney Page A

Book: My True Love by Karen Ranney Read Free Book Online
Authors: Karen Ranney
Tags: Historical Romance
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traveling companions. He had said that Hannah was too old, a remark that caused Hannah to cease talking to him for one whole day. His comments about Douglas were even less charitable.
    “If you treat him as if he can do nothing,” she had told him, “then that’s exactly what he will do. Give him an opportunity, Ian. Let him show you how helpful he can be.”
    Unfortunately, Douglas had vanished. Not very helpful.
    Ian frowned down at her, his stance watchful. As if he were on sentry duty and she was an approaching shadow.
    “Was it worth Hannah being injured and Douglas lost?” he asked, when she said nothing.
    He was not, in that moment, unlike the boy who’d taunted her. He did not spare his words in case he might cause her hurt.
    If he’d asked her the moment they’d arrived at Harrington Court, she might have confessed to her confusion. There was no castle, and the man who’d come to their rescue in the meadow was a forbidding stranger.
    It was only later, when she’d held Stephen, that she’d felt that sense of connection to him. That man, adrift in pain and fevered, had been more like the one she’d known. As if illness had stripped him of a shell he had worn, revealing the true man beneath.
    “Does it have anything to do with him?” A glance back at the house made Ian’s meaning clear enough. Anne was surprised at the question, at the insight it revealed. “You haunt the hallway outside his door, Anne, as if you cannot bear to be away from him even in sleep. Even when Hannah sends you from her room, you do not stray far from the house.”
    She could feel her cheeks warm.
    “Do you think yourself invisible? I am not the first who has noticed it.”
    “But you are the only one who finds it necessary to comment upon it.”
    She frowned up at him, willing him to go away. It was not in her nature to be rude, but at that moment she wished to be. She wanted to silence him. He spoke of things he did not understand. But she would not make it more clear to him.
    “The sooner we are gone from here, the better, Anne,” Ian said curtly.
    She watched him as he walked away. And felt a guilty pleasure in his departure.

 
    Chapter 5
     
    H annah sat in a chair beside her, eyes closed. But when a knock sounded on the door, she readily answered it. She feigned sleep, but was as alert as a magpie. Anne didn’t bother hiding her smile.
    The maid bustled into the room with Hannah’s morning tray. Something Hannah heartily disliked, being waited on with such assiduousness. But in this she was a captive. She could barely move due to the soreness of her ribs. Rest was the very best thing for her. A fact that even she recognized, although she would have denied it had she been asked.
    “Place the tray on the table first, Muriel.” Betty stood in the doorway, hands folded at her waist. She looked around the room with the proprietary air of any goodwife. Did the windows need washing, the pewter polishing, the brass shining? She frowned at the fireplace, looked swiftly at the floor. Anne knew that as soon as Muriel left the room, she would be given orders to sweep both.
    Anne looked up at Betty’s entrance and returned the housekeeper’s smile. Her first sight of Betty had been when she was eight. Back then, she’d appeared a tall woman with large hands. But to a child all adults are tall. Now she appeared only of average height.
    She felt a fondness for the housekeeper and thought that it might be reciprocated. A bond had been forged between them the night she’d knelt at Stephen’s side. A conspiracy of care.
    Amidst the clink of china and Hannah’s and Muriel’s voices, she asked the question she had asked every morning for a week.
    “The earl? He is well?”
    Every day Betty brought her word of his progress. “The physician says he is healing and such sleep is good for him” had been the message for three agonizingly long days. The news had gradually improved. Two days ago his fever had broken. Yesterday he

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