Gallant Waif by Anne Gracie (the alpha prince and his bride full story free .txt) 📗

radiant. “Thank you, Cousin Jeremiah, thank you. You don’t know how much it means to me that my grandmother left these to me,” she said in a soft, husky voice that told Jack she was very moved. Mr Cole shifted uncomfortably in his seat. She stood up abruptly and smiled mistily at the two men. “If you don’t mind, I would like to look at my grandmother’s bequest in my chamber. Will you excuse me, please?” She held out her hand to her cousin. “Will I see you again, Cousin Jeremiah?”

“Of course.” He smiled, bending over her hand again. “You don’t think I will go away again, just when I have discovered a charming little cousin all of my very own? I will seek accommodation in the nearest town and with your permission, Cousin, will call again tomorrow.”

She nodded happily and left the room, cradling the packet to her bosom. Jack stood staring after her, flabbergasted. To see her face, one would have thought she had been given the Crown Jewels, not a small collection of trumpery beads. The girl never failed to amaze him. She was like no other female he had known. He turned and looked at Mr Cole. He was smiling to himself in a very satisfied manner. Damn the man. Jack didn’t like him one little bit.

“The front door is this way, Cole.”

“It has been a pleasure to meet you, Mr Carstairs,” said Mr Cole politely, disregarding the glowering look his host was giving him. “I look forward to furthering our acquaintance. I collect you are one of our gallant heroes from the Peninsula. I would be delighted to discuss it with you at some future time.”

The gallant hero, nauseated by the description, managed not to throw Kate’s cousin down the steps and contented himself with slamming the door instead.

Jack needed a drink, so he went into the library and stopped dead. Kate was sitting in a wing chair. She looked up. “Millie is washing the floor in my room,” she said by way of explanation of her presence in the library.

He nodded. “That fellow has left.”

“It was very good of him to come all this way,” Kate said quietly. “He could have just sent these to me by mail.”

Jack watched the way her hands stroked the packet that still lay in her lap. There was a long silence.

“You seemed pleased to see him,” he said at last.

Kate sighed. “Yes, it is so wonderful to discover that I am not utterly alone in the world, after all.”

“You are not alone at all.”

“But I am, Jack,” she said softly. “Or at least I was.”

“You have my grandmother—” he began. And me.

“Oh, Lady Cahill is a dear,” she interrupted, “but in truth she is no kin of mine. I am a charitable project she has taken on for the sake of my mother’s memory, that is all. She has been very kind and generous, and I am grateful to her for it, but you must see that I have no real claim on her. It is different to know that someone is part of your family, that you belong to them.”

Jack objected to that in the strongest terms. “You do not belong to that overfed, overdressed, fawning puffbag!”

“Mr Carstairs,” Kate reproved him coldly, “I will thank you to speak politely of Cousin Jeremiah in my presence. He is well built, not overfed in the least and I find his taste in clothes impeccable.” The look she cast on Jack’s stained buckskins was not lost on him. “Moreover, he has a kind heart and he came all the way here from Leeds only to meet me and to give me my grandmother’s jewellery.”

“Trumpery beads,” he snorted.

Kate bridled at his tone. “They may be trumpery beads to you, but they are all the jewellery I possess, and they belonged to my grandmother, whom I never met.”

She clutched the small packet of jewellery to her breast.

“My mother died when I was born and I never knew her. All I had of her were her pearls and her eyes. The pearls I had to sell, to pay our debts.” And her eyes cost me my father’s love. “You cannot understand what it means to me to know that my grandmother remembered me, for my father fell out with my grandparents before I was born and they never contacted us as far as I know.” Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

The bequest was far greater than its size or monetary value. Kate had only known her mother through others’ eyes—and the image had been tarnished with her own guilt. But now Kate had something tangible, from a grandmother who’d thought of her with love instead of blame. Who’d cared enough to send her a keepsake—one which was not tainted by her father’s resentment of Kate’s existence.

“You call them trumpery beads, but my mother may have worn these as a girl, don’t you see?” Her voice broke and she turned and fled upstairs.

Jack swore under his breath and ran his hand angrily through his hair. Damn him, did he always have to speak before he thought? He hadn’t meant to sneer at her pathetic little collection of jewellery; it had just been too much for him. First Francis had put him in a temper, with his damnably impertinent plans for Kate’s future, and then to come home and find Kate beaming with delight on some oily Cit. . . it was too much! And besides which, his leg was hurting him.-It was his own fault too, showing off before his friends. He would have to have it massaged again before it stiffened up on him any more.

“Carlos!” he bellowed. “Carlos!” He stumped his way morosely upstairs.

Chapter Thirteen

Damn it all, Francis,” Jack exploded. “At least Tubby and Drew had the decency not to outstay their welcome. Haven’t you got anything better to do than to hang around here for weeks on end, eating me out of house and home?”

Francis chuckled. “Not the least, dear