Free The Wildest Heart by Rosemary Rogers Page A

I looked at her flushed face.
    â€œYou hated my father. And you hated me from the moment I was born. I’m a product of your hate, Mother dear. Why blame me for being stronger than you were?”
    â€œWhy? Because you are hard. It’s not strength, but hardness—a lack of feeling in you.”
    â€œIt’s hardly important now.”
    â€œNo, I suppose not. But the blame wasn’t all mine! I was prepared to be a good wife. If your father had loved me more and despised me less, something might have come of it. But he too married to please others. There was another woman. I never knew who she was or what she was to him, but he would mutter her name sometimes, in his sleep. ‘Elena—’ he would say—‘Elena!’ And he called you Rowena Elaine. No, he never loved me! Is it any wonder that I sought love?”
    For an instant I saw her as she must have looked twenty years ago, before she became overly plump and the fine lines etched themselves in her face. Poor Fanny. Product of her environment. But as selfish in her own way as she accused me of being. Whatever her reasons for her sudden outburst, we were past the point of understanding each other, or, for that matter, of any genuine communication.
    So I looked back at her, saying nothing, and after a while, shrugging, she seemed to regain her composure.
    â€œAh, well. Perhaps it’s a good thing we need not indulge in the conventional strain of farewells. There were things that I felt had to be said, and they are behind us now.”
    We did not kiss when the time for final parting came. A footman lifted my trunks from the carriage and set them down for the swarming porters to carry. Nor did I turn my head when the carriage drove off. Within a few hours I would be leaving the past behind me and embarking on a new life. I remembered my last journey, and could almost have smiled with pity for the miserable, frightened, and resentful creature I had been then. Could it have been only two years ago? This time, at least, I knew what I was going to.
    I had reached the water’s edge, and as I lifted my head I felt the tangy, salty kiss of the wind on my face, felt it ruffle my skirts and tug at my bonnet.
    â€œJourneys end in lover’s meetings.” Now, why had that ridiculous piece of nonsense suddenly sprung into my mind? I had no lover to meet me—indeed, I had already made up my mind that I would never have, if I could help it. I would never be controlled by anyone again. I would be my own mistress from now on.
    Hadn’t I learned about love? A ridiculous, fumbling thing that made an animal of a man and required from a woman only a certain degree of compliance: At least animals didn’t try to rationalize their expressions of lust or attempt to prettify it by calling it love.
    â€œWe’ll be sailing with the tide,” I heard a sailor call to another, and the same wind that touched me made little dancing ripples in the water. A fine, sunny day. A good day to begin a journey.

Three
    The vessel on which I sailed was an American one, and I was soon to get used to hearing the strange, nasal accents of my fellow passengers. These Americans were all more friendly and outgoing than the English, and although I kept to myself they persisted in being friendly and curious. Strangely enough, the fact that I was possessed of a title excited the most comment. For all that they prided themselves on their form of democracy, most of the friendly Americans I met could hardly hide the fact that they were impressed at meeting the daughter of an earl.
    We stopped for over three days at Le Havre to pick up passengers from Paris, and I had the chance to visit Paris again myself, but under vastly different circumstances from all the other times I had been there. I saw none of Sir Edgar Cardon’s friends this time, but spent my time in shopping, completely on my own, which in itself gave me an exhilarated feeling.
    Still, I