Free The Clergyman's Daughter by Julia Jeffries

instant later a footman garbed in smart blue and gray livery swung open the door, and when he stepped back, bowing deeply, Raeburn looked out the door, recoiling in surprise. “Oh, damn,” he muttered, “what does that woman think this is, a royal progress?” After a second he leaped down from the coach with that grace that always surprised Jessica and turned to hold out his hand to her.
    Leaning forward from the squabs, Jessica saw what had startled him; a double row of servants flanked up the steps, waiting in the chilly, frost-laden wind with grim expectation, silent and intimidating. She hesitated in confusion, fighting down an urgent desire to slam the door shut again. As she wavered, Raeburn’s wide mouth thinned, and in a low rumble he chided, “Buck up, my girl, I thought you had more spirit than that….” With a sigh of resignation Jessica pulled her pelisse tight about her and placed her small, mittened hand in his.
    Rigidly she mounted the marble steps, her chin high, her arm tucked securely through Raeburn’s. He nodded cordially to the senior members of his household and muttered again, with less humor, “Dammit, Jess, relax! Despite the way they’re lined up, these are my servants, not some Paris mob, so there’s no need for you to act like an aristo climbing into a tumbril.”
    “I’m not an aristocrat at all,” she shot back acidly, her eyes trained on a point somewhere above the powdered head of the butler at the top of the stairs. “That’s the problem. There’s not a man or woman here who doesn’t know that my birth is as humble as their own. They’d be more willing to accept—”
    “They’ll accept you as my sister-in-law,” the earl growled impatiently. “That’s all that matters.”
    “Oh, Graham, don’t be naif,” Jessica began, thinking of the thousand little slights she had suffered when she first came to Renard Chase, the tiny indignities she had suffered as the servants, taking their cue from their master’s offhand attitude, reminded her in their own subtle ways that she was no better than….
    “Graham, you’re back!” a light, musical voice squealed with unfeigned delight, and as Jessica hesitated, startled, a tall girl with bright red hair rocketed out of the doorway and burst through the ranks of servants, flinging herself at the earl.
    Jessica recoiled instinctively as Raeburn released her arm. She was not ready yet to meet her enemy…. Raeburn caught the girl easily, his massive chest absorbing the impact of her exuberant greeting as he steadied her slender shoulders with his large hands. “Easy now, Clairie,” he teased, hugging her fondly, “else you’ll have us all rolling around like ninepins at the foot of the stairs. Comport yourself as a lady and prove to Jess that you’ve abandoned your hoydenish ways since last she saw you.”
    “Oh, Graham”—the girl laughed, her bouncing curls gleaming ruddily in the watery sunlight—“don’t you start sounding like Aunt Talmadge! She wanted me to sit in the parlor doing needlework until you called for me, but I just couldn’t wait that long. I had to see you.” She turned to face Jessica, and her naturally pale cheeks were faintly pink. “J-Jessica?” she ventured, as if uncertain of her reception.
    Jessica struggled to school her expression, astonished by that hesitant note in her young sister-in-law’s voice, so different from the imperious tone she had always affected in the past. Staring at her, Jessica realized that Claire’s attitude was not the only thing that had altered considerably since she first met her. The coltish, freckled fifteen-year-old whose unruly red hair had been worn in frizzy plaits was now a young woman, tall and slim, her blossoming figure graceful in a fashionable day dress of cream-colored wool. The freckles had faded, and the startling hair, cropped, was worn in a tangle of curls, the deceptively artless coiffure that Raeburn said took two maids to achieve. Only those