Free The Folly by M. C. Beaton

machinations in trying to reclaim their home. The girls were very young and the plunge from riches to a sort of genteel straitened circumstances must have been hard. There was a soft glow about Rachel when she was happy that seemed to make Minerva’s charms, by contrast, look like hard brilliance. He gave himself a mental shake. Minerva was speaking. “I quite dote on your children,” she said. “I feel it is a great tragedy that I have none of my own.”
    “Perhaps you may yet have children,” he said lightly. “You may marry again.”
    “When one has made a bad mistake, or rather, one’s father has forced one into an unhappy marriage, then one is not anxious to marry again.”
    He looked at her with quick sympathy. “I understandwhat you mean. But there are good people in this world.”
    Her eyes caressed his face. “I am beginning to think there are.”
    He felt a little chill, a sense of withdrawal. Like all men, he wanted to be the hunter, not the hunted.
    “How long do you plan to stay at Mannerling?” he asked abruptly.
    To his horror, those beautiful eyes of hers filled with tears. “Alas,” she said brokenly, “I told George we had been too forward in coming. We will leave as soon as possible.”
    He immediately felt like a brute. “My dear Miss Santerton, you and your brother are welcome to be my guests for as long as you wish.”
    She dabbed at her eyes. “Too kind,” she said. “I must do something to repay you. Your poor children, I am sure, would appreciate some feminine company. I would be prepared to spend some time with them.”
    “As to that, although I do thank you for your offer, the matter is attended to. Mark and Beth go daily to Brookfield House to be educated by the governess there, an estimable woman, and they also have the company of the Beverley girls.”
    “Ah, yes, the Beverleys,” she said in a low voice. “You do not think the many scandals attached to that unfortunate family will affect your children?”
    “I have heard all the scandals and no, I do not. They are very happy.”
    “Mmm. Oh, well, if you are satisfied…I mean, I trust the girls are not using the children to ingratiate themselves with you.”
    “Hardly. Miss Rachel gave me my character over my neglect of Mark and Beth.”
    “We shall see,” said Minerva. “We shall see.”
    The ball wound to its close. Rachel had not been asked to dance by Charles Blackwood and she felt it was something of a slight, for he had danced with both Lizzie and Belinda, a Belinda who, Rachel thought, had flirted quite outrageously.
    She felt suddenly tired. The room was overwarm, faces were flushed, and quite a number of the gentlemen were drunk. But she knew her mother would not leave the ball until the general did. Rachel reflected that she had never seen her mother look so animated before. She still had a handsome figure and a neat ankle. She had rouged her face with two bright circles, despite Miss Trumble’s advice to the contrary, in an effort to banish the pallor caused by long bouts of imaginary illness when she was mured up in her bedchamber. But Rachel noticed how the general’s eyes kept straying to where Miss Trumble sat against the wall, and feared ructions ahead. Lady Beverley would have been shocked could she have guessed that the general’s reason for not taking Miss Trumble up for a dance was because he feared she might make life difficult for her governess.
    At last Rachel, dancing a second dance with Mr. Cater, saw the Mannerling party leave and knew that they could now go home. Mr. Cater sought out Lady Beverley and gained her permission to call.
    “He would do very well for you, Rachel,” said Lady Beverley in the carriage on the road home.
    “You go too fast, Mama,” pleaded Rachel wearily.“I know very little about the gentleman except that he owns sugar plantations in Barbados in the West Indies. He employs slaves.”
    “I should be very surprised if he did not, my child. How else is the