Read His Californian Countess for Free Online Page A

what it was like to be orphaned. The loneliness and grief had nearly torn her apart on that long train ride east. But she’d been lucky enough to have her aunt and uncle meet her and envelope her in loving arms. Even though Aunty had been sick for so long before she was gone, too, Amber had been secure in the love of the adults in her life even when it was only her and Uncle Charles.
    It wasn’t long after Aunty died that he began talking of her going to a two-year boarding school where she’d be further educated with the idea that she would advance from there to Vassar. It wasn’t merely the education he’d wanted for her, though. He’d wanted her away from the coal patch. And away from men like Joseph. Men who were miners. Men who could go to work one day and never return. He’d wanted more for her than pain and loss. So he’d sent her away where someone else could see she met the right people.
    But as soon as the ink was dry on her prestigiousdiploma, she’d moved back to the coal patch, to a town where the mine owner wanted to educate the children of his miners. And there she’d met and fallen in love with Joseph—a miner. Then, just after the banns were read the third time, Joseph died.
    She’d continued to teach, but the heart had gone out of her. In the state she was in, she’d nearly let Joseph’s mother push her on her other son. She’d woken up one day, looked around at the soot and death and seen Uncle Charles’s wisdom. And that had put her right where she was now.
    Coming to care too much for a man she was beginning to fear was about to die.
    Amber shook her head and went back to bathing him, careful of the rash he’d said hurt when she ran the wet cloths over it. She’d checked her grandmother’s book and sure enough, it mentioned that the rash was painful and burned.
    “No, Uncle Oswald. Please don’t! No! Damn you to hell for hurting her!” Jamie called out, tossing on the narrow bed.
    Amber grabbed his shoulders while trying to hold on to him. The stool she stood on rocked under her feet. “Jamie! Calm down,” she ordered in her schoolroom voice.
    He stilled instantly and opened his eyes. His voice rawer for his shouting, he rasped out, “You can’t…let it happen. She’s sweet and innocent. He…he’s a monster.”
    “All I can do is keep taking care of you.”
    “Marry me. Be Meara’s mother. She needs you. You don’t know what he’d do. He’d break her. Nearly broke me, but I had Mimm and Alex. She’d love you, Pixie.”
    He knew her again. He knew who he was asking—begging to marry him before it was too late to help hischild. Could she do it? Could she marry him and care for the child he spoke of with such love? She’d wanted children for as long as she could remember. But she’d buried that dream with Joseph.
    “Don’t think it…to death.” He chuckled, but it was a heartbreaking sound.
    Amber wanted to remember the man on deck, handsome and smiling and kind. Not this hollow-eyed near-corpse. She forced her thoughts to his strange proposal. “I’m all alone, Jamie. How could I care for a child?”
    “How can you not? I’m dying. You know it. I know it. There’s money. You wouldn’t have to worry about means. That old pile in Ireland would go to Oswald and he can have it along with the title he’s wanted my whole life. But please don’t let him have Meara. You have to promise to protect her.”
    “He’s powerful. He’d take all the money, Jamie. I couldn’t fight him. I’m going to be a governess in California. What kind of life would that be for a little girl who should have been wealthy?”
    He frowned, looking thoughtful. “I’ll write a codicil,” he said at last.
    “You could barely hold a pen.”
    “Then you write it. I’ll sign it. Make Captain Baker witness it. Figure it out. Save her, damn it. Please. At least let me rest in peace.”
    “Stop it! I’m not letting you die! Then you’d be stuck with me when all this turns out okay.