Jane Porter - Bought by the Rich Man

“Why?” Cristiano asked.

She looked at him, and then away, and glancing out the window, Sam noticed the first snowflake fall, and then another, and another. The flakes were scattered, slow, as if indecisive about what they were going to do. “I don’t know. But Gabby used to cry about it. Johann and I fought about it. It didn’t matter. He never changed his mind.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am, too.” Maybe it was the delicate snow flurries, or the pale silver and pewter sky, but Sam felt a rush of emotion so strong she had to bite her lip to keep the tears from filling her eyes again.

She missed so much right now.

She missed virtually everything. Her parents. Charles. Even Gabby, although Gabby wasn’t gone yet. “I love her,” she whispered, concentrating on the view outside the car window where the snow was coming down faster and thicker now in dense white flurries. Some of the snowflakes were so big they looked like bits of lace dropping from the sky and yet they were weightless, and temperatures must have continued to drop as the snow was sticking to the ground. “Even if you take her from me, she’ll always be my girl.”

“Then make the transition easy on her.” Cristiano’s voice sounded as cold and hard as the bare limbs of the trees outside. “Help her adjust. Don’t pull her in two.”

It was still snowing as they reached the Rookery, and the small gamekeeper’s cottage never looked smaller or darker. Sam couldn’t imagine spending the rest of the afternoon alone in the dark cottage with Cristiano.

As he parked “I think I’ll go to the Rookery and see if I can’t locate some candles for tonight,” Sam said. “The pantry used to be full of them. Every now and then we’d lose electricity and we depended on candles and kerosene lamps to get us through until the backup generator came on.”

“Do you know where the lamps are?” Cristiano asked, carrying the last of the groceries into the kitchen.

“They should be in the pantry, near the candles. It’s where we kept the emergency supplies.”

“I’ll go with you, see what we can find.”

It was dark inside the Rookery. Power to the abandoned orphanage had been shut off, but once Sam got the back door open, she didn’t need lights to find her way around. She’d grown up here, spent over fifteen years here. The Rookery, for better or worse, was home.

Just as she thought, she discovered boxes of candles, matches and three old kerosene lamps in the pantry off the kitchen.

“I’ll take the lamps back to the cottage,” Cristiano said.

Sam nodded. “I’ll just have a quick look around. I’ll be back soon.”

With a candle to light her way, Sam walked through the Rookery’s high arched hallways. The old Persian carpets were threadbare and covered only portions of the stone floor and every now and then her footsteps echoed, a too-loud clatter that bounced off the vaulted ceiling.

Nothing had changed, she thought. The furniture was all here, just a few pieces like the piano and the Georgian sofa in the parlor were covered. Everything else was exactly as she remembered. The large oil landscapes still covered the walls. The back room facing the garden was still lined with tables and chairs. That was the room they studied in, reading and writing papers and doing homework.

She’d thought the house would be dustier, dirtier, but everything was fairly tidy, and although a few cobwebs clung to the corners, it wasn’t the mess she’d imagined.

Mrs. Bishop must still come in and clean, Sam thought, climbing the first of the stairs, and knowing that Mrs. Bishop still made an effort hurt more than even desertion did.

It was brighter upstairs. The windows on the second floor hadn’t been boarded over and Sam’s breath caught in her throat as she glimpsed the oil portrait hanging at the top of the stairs.

Reverend Charles Putnam.

Her Charles. Sam looked—his handsome face, his gentle expression, the kindness in his brown eyes—until she couldn’t look any longer. He’d been her prince, her knight on a white stallion. He’d been better than she deserved.

Turning away, she pushed open one of the bedroom doors and crossed to the tall multipaned window. In this bedroom Sam could believe that time had stopped.

Nothing had changed from the night eight years ago when the world as she knew it ended and a new life began.

She’d been standing here, not far from this very window, when word had come that Charles had been killed.

She’d just begun to undress, to change from her wedding gown into her going away outfit.

Sam exhaled in a short, hard painful puff. Her fingers curled into her palms. Twice a bride, she thought, and still a virgin. But to lose Charles, the way she had…

Sam reached out to touch the windowpane. The glass was chilly, slick, a stark contrast to the lush plum velvet curtain panel, the velvet curtain the same fabric draping the bed.

God how she hated this room. And loved this room. It was Charles’s bedroom, the room they were to share when they returned from their honeymoon trip to Bath.

Swallowing hard, around the thick lump filling her throat, Sam pressed her fingertips against the glass and then let her hand fall away.

Without a last look around, Sam left the bedroom, closed the door and was hurrying toward the staircase when she remembered the candle she’d left in the hall.

Sam was just returning for it when she saw Cristiano on the stairs. “Having a look around?” he asked.

She nodded, praying he didn’t see the sheen of tears in her eyes. Her past was private. She didn’t discuss it with anyone and she refused to give Cristiano another reason to mock her. “I’m done, though. I’ve seen enough.”

“You haven’t been to the third floor yet.”

She was desperate now to get out, to escape the Rookery and its press of bittersweet memories. “I know what’s up there. I used to live up there. All the children slept upstairs.”

“Is it just one big room?”

“Yes, filled with dozens of beds, dozens of children who grew up without their mothers and fathers.”

Back in the cottage, Sam put the kettle on the fire Cristiano had laid again this afternoon in the old cast iron stove. She stood at the kitchen window as she waited for the water to boil and watched the dense white flurries coming down. It was so quiet, so beautiful, she thought. The snow was thick and still and it covered everything in every direction.

Footsteps sounded behind, slow measured steps on the wooden floor. Sam immediately tensed, jittery all over again. Her stomach flipped. Her breasts felt tight. Goose bumps covered her skin.

She hated his effect on her.

Hated that she was so aware of him.

She didn’t know why he did this to her.

She glanced over her shoulder. His arms were piled high with firewood for the stove. She had to concede he’d been quite dedicated when it came to keeping the fire burning, the wood bins filled, and the cottage warm. “Thank you.”

He nodded.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked, trying to cover her awkwardness.

“No. Thank you.”

She turned back to the window. The snow wasn’t letting up. It just continued to fall, adding to the white mounds blanketing the walls and ground outside, making the late afternoon unnaturally bright.

“It just keeps coming down,” she said, all pins and needles as Cristiano arranged the wood in the bin by the stove. Her hands tightened on the edge of the farmhouse sink. Be strong, she told herself. Be confident.

“We don’t get many storms like this,” she continued, feeling a perverse need to fill the silence. She’d never been much of a talker, usually preferred to let her young charges chatter, but right now she felt like a high-strung child herself. “But when we do get a storm, all of England shuts down. We don’t know what to do with the snow. No one’s prepared, you see.”