Read The Clergyman's Daughter for Free Online Page A

“Begging you pardon, Your Lordship, but I’ve been scrubbing the floor in the kitchen, and ‘tis all atumble in there right now. If Your Lordship would allow me, I’ll bring the scuttle in here and build up a fine fire faster than you can say—”
    “All right, girl,” Raeburn said impatiently, dismissing her. “Just be quick about it. And make sure you bring your mistress’s shoes and a warm wrap.”
    “Yes, Your Lordship,” Willa mumbled, and she fled to the kitchen. In a moment she was back with the coal and the requested garments, and as Jessica stooped to tie the ribbons of her toasty slippers, she glanced questioningly at the maid, who stood just behind Raeburn. Willa shook her head slightly and pantomimed sleep.
    Jessica sighed and seated herself on the sprung settee, draping her wool shawl about her thin shoulders. With an uncertain smile she motioned to the seat beside her. “Please do sit down and make yourself comfortable, Graham,” she said archly. “Let Willa take your coat back into the kitchen with her, and it will be most pleasantly warm when you are ready to leave.”
    Raeburn glanced suspiciously at Jessica and murmured enigmatically, “Don’t think you’re going to get rid of me that easily, my girl.” He shrugged the greatcoat from his broad shoulders and passed it to Willa, who had to carry it high against her chest to keep the tails from dragging the floor. When she had departed from the parlor again, Raeburn turned to Jessica and regarded her silently for a long moment, watching her fingers begin to plait her hair deftly and reshape it into the coiled knot that seemed almost too heavy for her slender neck. He commented curiously, “How do you do that? My sister needs two maids and a half a dozen mirrors….”
    Her task completed, Jessica folded her hands sedately in her lap and shrugged, her expression carefully neutral. “Those of us who have not been so…blessed…as Lady Claire must learn to do for ourselves.”
    Raeburn’s frown deepened. “ ‘Lady Claire’?” he echoed mockingly. “Why so formal with your sister-in-law? You’ve never had any difficulty calling me Graham.”
    But you and I went beyond the bounds of formality the first day we met, Jessica thought with a stab of bitterness, recalling anew his assault on her innocence, those groping hands and braising lips that had ravaged her dreams…. Aloud she said waspishly, “When I…joined your family, Lady Claire told me bluntly that although she was Andrew’s sister, she would never be mine. After that I took pains never to encroach upon our accidental connection.”
    His fair brows lifted sharply at the venom in her voice. “Forgiving little thing, aren’t you?” he muttered.
    Jessica eyed him squarely. “My father may have been a clergyman,” she said slowly, “but I have never learned to turn the other cheek.”
    Raeburn’s gray gaze was equally direct. “I’m well aware of that,” he said. After the briefest of hesitations he continued. “Speaking of your father, did you know that he has married again?”
    Jessica caught her breath with a hiss. “Remarried?” she demanded hoarsely. “You mean he has already found someone to take my mother’s place, after he killed her with his lust?” Her jade eyes lost their luster as she thought of her mother’s body wasted in death, her emaciation made even more grotesque by her bloated belly. She had writhed in agony for a day and a night, calling out her oldest daughter’s name repeatedly, before Jessica’s father—who had vowed publicly never to speak to his thankless child again—relented enough to allow one of her brothers to ride his old cob to Renard Chase to fetch her. By the time Jessica and Andrew raced to the vicarage with the Foxe family physician in tow, her mother was dead, the infant still unborn….
    Jessica leaped to her feet and paced nervously about the tiny parlor, trying to compose herself. With withering scorn she snapped,