An Inadvisable Wager (The Curse of the Weatherby Ball Book 2) Eliza Lloyd (reading books for 7 year olds .TXT) 📖

She climbed the stairs, holding to the side rail. A cool wash of air howled through the tower, messing Nora’s hair and causing her dress to whirl around her legs. When she came to this place, she was reminded of her real home.

Henbury Hall was all so perfectly formed in her mind. The rock arch over the entrance. The long lane with the beautiful apple trees. The oval-shaped ponds behind them with fountains at the end, toward the manor house. The manicured lawns where she rode her pony.

Her pony, a pretty little sorrel. As gentle as a kitten. Her pony. Something else she lost that day.

From there her memories were fuzzy. The house was big with several rooms. There was a garden, but she didn’t remember where it was in relation to the house. And a greenhouse, she thought, at the back of the house.

She didn’t remember the stables or any of the valuable stallions. She didn’t remember where the cows and goats were milked but she could distinctly remember the smell of manure wafting around on breezy days. For her, it was just part of Henbury Hall, not a distraction, not a nuisance. The scent of life in the country was just a part of the whole.

Nora took one last look around. The ripples in the water were easy today. She could just hear the lap of the water against the shore’s edge. There were a few areas, along the shallower edges, with tall cattails, its reedy growth a great protection for small animals and birds’ nests and little girls who didn’t care about getting wet, only about having an afternoon adventure hiding in the stalks.

She continued her stroll to the far side of the lake, passing a few of the side trails, one that led to the south pasture and another to Maralese and Theodore Dorman’s small tenant farm.

At the Dorman’s trail, she stopped, closing her eyes in concentrated effort, trying to remember just one of the neighbors at Henbury Hall. Just one.

Disquiet stirred in her heart and stomach. Being at Whitmarsh was supposed to be comforting, a calm in the storm, as it had always been.

Instead, Carlow followed her around the lake, smiling and laughing his way around her mind. She’d been so sure about the success of her plan, she’d never given a thought to actually liking the son of the family on which she’d pinned all her anger. And her hopes. Could she rightly dislike his two friends, Andover and now Fromme and Rode? The last of the Wicked Three were gone. Only the sons remained, who may have no knowledge of what their fathers had done but would get the benefit from it. Was the truth now lost forever?

Yes, except in the pages of her mother’s diary.

She held the stick and with a mighty swing beat it against a large oak. After the fourth strike, the smooth pole unbroken, her hands stinging from the vibrations, she dropped the staff and shook her hands.

“Bloody hell!”

Nora picked up the staff, uttering a few more choice words about husbands and liars and cheats and nobles and ball curses. And fate.

She picked up her pace, stabbing the end of the wooden rod into the ground, this time attacking the terrible doubts that chased her back to Whitmarsh.

Nora spotted the rock wall guiding her back to the house and hurried around the corner.

“I was worried you planned to hurl yourself into the lake,” Carlow said.

Chapter Seven

“I would if I thought it would do any good,” Nora said.

Gabriel’s trip had taken over three days. He’d left South Weald, intending a speedy, not break-neck, return to London. When he’d arrived, dusty and tired and bounced to a jelly, he’d expected to have a leisurely bath drawn, enjoy a magnificent dinner and sit in the library with Nora to discuss his trip and answer her questions about why he had gone without her. And maybe persuade her that Ellis wasn’t such a bad person after all.

Instead, Mintz had said, “She’s gone.”

The story was short and simple. Her brother had arrived, they’d eaten from Gabriel’s larder and then she was gone before Mintz could say the jig was up.

“Pack food and drink. Have the coachman change out the horses. Get a new driver. I don’t care who.”

“But, my lord, you look a disaster. Why not have a bath, rest a bit and leave in the morning?”

“Mintz, I asked you to do one thing. I’m not ready to have any sort of discussion with you. About anything.” Gabriel had a short fuse, on occasion, but berating the staff was not his way. Nora had a way of making him just a little insane.

“Yes, my lord.”

All of that was forgotten at the sight of Nora.

Nora. He hadn’t thought of anything else since leaving South Weald. Love wasn’t a certainty yet, but he did like her a whole lot. She was alive in ways that Gabriel had never experienced, at least by the standards of ton debutantes. He’d never realized how little he was attracted to the sameness currently swanning around at the balls and parks and musicales he was required to attend during the season.

“Well, Lady Carlow, where do we go from here?” he asked.

“To the house, I would imagine. You look like one of those horses the mail carriages ride to death down the King’s Highway. Unless you want to throw yourself into the lake?”

“You jest. I am wearing my best boots. Will you walk with me back to the house?” He held out his arm, to which she submitted with a delicate touch.

They strolled quietly for a few minutes. “Why did you come to Whitmarsh? This lonely backwater surely does not compare to your life in London?” she asked.

“My life in London has grown quiet of late. A