Free Promise Me Forever by Lorraine Heath Page B

accepted, and so she’d changed. But then so had her mother and her sisters. They would gather in the quiet of the garden, practicing their enunciation. It was more than replacing the drawl. It was learning the proper words, inflections, style.
    When her stepfather had stumbled across them one afternoon, exchanging words they’d heard, trying to decipher their meanings, attempting to use them correctly…a look of regret so incredibly profound had crossed his features that Laurenhad been certain he would put them all on a ship and send them back to Texas. Instead, he’d hired a series of tutors to teach them diction, etiquette, walking, dancing, riding, dining, piano, singing, painting, and letter writing. No conceivable aspect of their behavior was left unschooled.
    Tom wanted her to teach him what he needed to know. The man had no idea what all was involved. It would take months. Dear God, it could take years. He was brash and bold, a man of uncultured habits and wicked temptations.
    And a part of her had no desire whatsoever to see him tamed.
    Hearing the rustle of skirts, the quiet footsteps of a graceful stride, she wasn’t at all surprised when a moment later her mother sat on the bench beside her, and said softly, “I’ve always enjoyed this section of the garden.”
    “Me too.”
    “As have I,” her mother corrected gently.
    “I’m not in the mood to play English to night, Mama.”
    Her mother wrapped her hand around Lauren’s where it rested in her lap. “Dinner is ready to be served.”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “Samantha encountered Tom in the foyer. He offered his regrets, but apparently he remembered another pressing engagement and was unable to stay for dinner.”
    “Apparently.”
    “You spoke with him before he left?”
    “Before he took his leave,” she corrected out of habit, the same habit that had made her mother correct her only seconds earlier. Among the Texas ladies of the house hold, when it came to emulating those with whom Ravenleigh associated, they recognized no hierarchy, simply a heartfelt desire to help each of them fit in.
    “Yes,” Lauren continued. “I spoke with him.”
    “Did he say anything of interest?”
    She couldn’t quite identify the tone of her mother’s voice. It was as though she’d expected him to reveal some horrible truth.
    “He wants me to teach him to be a gentleman.”
    “He can hire someone to oversee that task.”
    “He was seeking to hire me. I refused, of course.”
    Her mother squeezed her hand. “I know it must be difficult to see him again after all these years…”
    Lauren didn’t realize until she reached up and wiped the cool dampness from her cheeks that the tears she’d felt earlier had continued to fall. She swallowed hard. “ Difficult scarcely defines what I’m feeling. His place is here now, and I don’t want mine to be.”
    She felt her mother’s hand twitch.
    Twisting around slightly, she studied her mother in the garden’s yellowish light. Her transformation from a hardworking cotton farmer into a countess had happened so gradually that Lauren sometimes had difficulty remembering what her mother looked like before they’d left Texas. What she did remember was her mother’s insistence that Lauren not spend time with that “incorrigible boy.”
    Lauren’s heart kicked up its beat as realization began to dawn as slowly as the sun easing over the horizon. “Tom told me that he wrote me, Mama. All these years. He wrote me.”
    Her mother rose to her feet, took several steps forward, crossed her arms over her chest, and gazed out on the darkness.
    “You kept his letters from me,” Lauren said, with a boldness born of undeniable comprehension.
    Her mother turned around. “You were so unhappy—”
    “And you thought keeping his letters from me was a way to make me happier?” she asked incredulously, coming to her feet and fisting her hands at her sides, infuriated beyond reason.
    “I thought it would make the