Read Casteel 03 Fallen Hearts for Free Online

interested in exploring than experiencing the boundless love we felt for each other? I sat down before the vanity and looked at myself in the mirror. Suddenly I had to laugh.
"I can't believe you, Heaven Leigh Stonewall. You're actually jealous of a house. And that's silly, isn't it?" My image in the mirror didn't respond.
After I showered and dressed, I went down the corridor to Jillian's suite of rooms. It had been well over two years since I had left her that day, framed before her arching bay windows, the sunlight pouring through her hair. I had come to despise her and had actually intended never to see her again.
Martha Goodman greeted me in the sitting room. She had been seated in the high-back French Provincial chair just to the right of the door to Jillian's bedroom, knitting. The moment she saw me enter, she smiled and rose to greet me.
"Why, Heaven. It's so good to see you again," she said, extending her hand. "Congratulations on your marriage. Mr. Tatterton told me of your impending arrival."
"Thank you, Martha. How is . . . my
grandmother?" I inquired. "Does she realize I have returned? Does she know I was married?" I asked with some interest.
"Oh, I'm afraid not. Mr. Tatterton did not prepare you for this visit?" she asked. I shook my head. "She's different, Heaven, quite different."
"How so?" I asked.
"It's best you see for yourself," she said, almost in a whisper. "Mrs. Tatterton is at her vanity table, preparing for guests," she added, tilting her round face to the right and nodding sadly.
"Guests?"
"People she says she has invited to watch an old movie in her private little theater."
"I see." I looked toward the bedroom door. "I'd better get this over with," I said and knocked gently on it. After a moment I heard Jillian's voice. She sounded softer, younger, happier.
"Yes?"
I looked at Martha Goodman, who closed her eyes gently and nodded before returning to her chair, and then I entered.
Jillian sat at her marble-top vanity table, dressed in one of her loose-fitting ivory floats trimmed with peach lace. She looked like a circus clown. Her hair was dyed a bright yellow and stuck up in thin, stiff strands. Her face looked like cracked porcelain, her cheeks blotched with bright red rouge. Eyeliner was slashed across her lids, the line drooping at the crinkly corners of her eyes. Her lipstick was thick, vibrant, caked at the corners of her mouth.
But when I looked past her, to her mirror, I saw to my horror a blank oval of bare wall. The gips in the mirror that had once hung over the vanity table had been removed Jillian sat before the empty frame staring into a memory of herself
I looked to her bed and saw dress after dress laid over the quilt. Dozens of pairs of shoes were on the floor beside the bed. Dresser drawers were left open with undergarments and stockings dangling over the sides. All her jewelry boxes were open. Glittering necklaces, bejeweled earrings, diamond and emerald bracelets were scattered over the top of the dresser. The room looked as though it had been ransacked by a madwoman. I didn't know what to do. Jillian had deteriorated far more than even I could have imagined.
Then Jillian spotted me and smiled widely, a demonic smile that made her clownish appearance even more frightening and pathetic.
"Leigh," she said, with forced cheerfulness. "Thank goodness you're here. I'm going absolutely mad trying to decide what to wear today. You know who's coming, don't you?" she added in a loud whisper. She looked about the room as though there were other people within who could hear. "Everybody who's anyone. And they're all coming to see my theater."
"Hello, Grandmother," I said, ignoring her mad ramblings. I thought that if I didn't go along with it, I might snap her out of it. Instead, she sat back and glared at me as though she had heard other words.
"What do you mean, you don't want to attend? I purposely invite influential people to Farthinggale so they and their sons will meet you. You should be