The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) by Shannon Farrell Page B

out of her room to see who had come to
    call. She was
    displeased to see Madeleine, but tried to be polite. She had
    no inkling of the
    terrible consequences that Madeleine’s odd behaviour
    portended.
     
     
Emer asked
    Madeleine to step into
    her room for some refreshment, but felt her heart sink when
    she saw the evil
    Mr. Pertwee leering at her as she entered the library. How
     on earth did the two of them know each other?
     
     
Emer decided that
    attack was the
    best form of defense. “I
    have a
    feeling I already know what you're going to say, Miss Lyndon,
    so the answer is
    no. I will not
    leave town, nor
    will I promise never to see Dalton again as long as I live. He is a
    grown man
    able to decide who he
    wishes to be friends with, and no amount of lies told by this
    man Pertwee is
    going to make me give him up,” Emer said hotly.
     
     
Madeleine's mouth
    flapped up and
    down like a landed trout's. Once again, she had been
    completely routed by the
    slut. She fumed that Emer had guessed so easily why she had
    come, and scowled
    blackly out the window at the children playing outside.
     
     
“Not even if this
    orphanage were in
    danger of closing, or worse?” Madeleine threatened softly.
     
     
“You may be a
    powerful force in this
    town, Miss Lyndon, but so is the Bishop. At any rate, I don’t have
    to run an orphanage to help
    the poor, I choose
    to. But if you want to try to run me out of town, it will
    reflect badly on you,
    trying to destroy my work out of petty spite and malice. Dalton
    wouldn’t be
    too impressed if you
    started spreading rumours about me, and besides, he was the on
    the Pegasus. He would know
    first-hand that what
    this liar has told you hasn’t got a particle of truth in it.”
     
     
“Better a liar than
    a whore,”
    Pertwee flung at her.
     
     
“If I were a man, I’d knock your teeth down your throat for
    that remark,” Emer
    hissed.
     
     
Pertwee was about
    to face up to
    Emer, when Madeleine held up one hand imperiously, and
    requested, “Pertwee,
    wait outside for a moment, will you?”
     
     
Once he was safely
    out of the room,
    Madeleine asked flatly, “How much of a, er, donation, do you
    want then, to
    leave, and never come back?”
     
     
Emer grew reckless,
    desperate to
    remove this conniving woman from Dalton’s life once and for
    all even if she
    couldn’t have him herself.
     
     
“I can't leave.
    There's no one else
    willing or able to do the work I do."
     
     
"I'm sure someone
    can be—"
     
     
"Hired? I doubt it,
    not without
    huge cost. Unless of course your volunteering your time and
    are able to
    teach—"
     
     
The other woman,
    clad in peacock
    blue, changed color to match the shade of her gown at the very
    idea.
     
     
"Miss Lyndon, let's
    be frank,
    shall we? I think you’re going to lose Dalton no matter what I
    do. He didn’t
    want to marry you before he
    met me. It was
    an arrangement
    between your two fathers, wasn’t it? Dalton never actually proposed
    to you, did he? Got down
    on bended knee
    and swore his undying love? No, I am sure he didn't. You face
    right now
    confirms that as well. No, indeed, once he’d met me, he wanted
    nothing more to
    do with the deal.
     
     
"I don’t know by
    what tricks
    old Frederick convinced Dalton that he was sincere, but he
    told Dalton I was
    dead. Now that
    Dalton knows I'm
    alive again after so many months of suffering without me, do
    you honestly think
    he won’t try to follow me, track me down, if I suddenly
    disappear again?”
     
     
“You have nothing
    to offer him, a
    common little streetwalker like you! I have a fortune, beauty,
    status...” Madeleine
    blustered.
     
     
“And yet you've
    never married?"
    Emer asked with a pointed look.
     
     
"I was saving
    myself for the
    right man," she fired back, "which is more than I can say for
    you.
    Look at you!" She indicated Emer's rounded belly with a flip of her
    hand. "Disgusting!"
     
     
"You may have all
    those