Free Carola Dunn by The Magic of Love Page A

You’ll be marrying young Tad one of these days, I daresay?”
     “That’d be telling, Mrs. Wellcome. Can I see his lordship?”
     “Brought a message from your father? I hope it’s nothing urgent, for his lordship’s not well in himself, if you know what I mean.”
     “He is ill?” Martha asked, alarmed.
     “Not exactly ill, no more than usual with his poor leg and his aches and pains, poor dear gentleman. No, he was up at the great house for three days,” Mrs. Wellcome explained, “and since he came home he’s been that blue-devilled. We’re all worried about him. Not but what he’ll see you, anyway, for he don’t ever turn anyone away.”
     Dismayed, Martha followed the housekeeper. Why was Lord Tarnholm unhappy? Was it so important to him to bring up his cousin’s son and heir—her son? Did he regret leaving her a way out? She hated to disappoint him, but she was frightened of the duke.
     She seemed to hear her own voice echoing in her ears, singing:
    “She’s robbed him of his horse and ring,
    “And left him to rage in the meadows green.”
     And Edward’s voice: “The ladies emerge victorious in all your favourite songs.”
     But songs were not real life, alas. In real life, a poor girl did not refuse a rich duke’s hand for the sake of her true love. In real life, she married him, Martha thought muddledly, as the miller’s daughter in the story had married the cruel king who threatened to cut off her head if she failed to spin straw into gold.
     Mrs. Wellcome opened a door and Martha recognized the room where Edward had been christened. The brocade chairs and sofas were covered with blue-striped satin now, and a fine fire blazed in the fireplace opposite the french windows.
     “It’s Martha Miller, my lord, wants a word with your lordship. Go on in,” Mrs. Wellcome urged as Martha hesitated on the threshold. “His lordship won’t bite.”
     Edward rose from a chair by the fire and limped towards her, smiling wryly. “Three days,” he said. “I take it you have discovered my name?”
     “Yes, my lord.”
     Gazing into his silvery eyes, she saw unhappiness, yearning, and an unselfish kindness that was glad for her sake that she had won.
     Something glimmered between them, a faint, insubstantial pattern, connecting them with a tracery as strong as steel—and as brittle as glass. Martha realized she could shatter it with a single word.
     She recalled Edward’s loathing for his grotesque, taunting faerie name and she knew she could not bring herself to pronounce it. She could not bear to hurt him because...because....
     How could she have been so blind?
     “Your name is Edward James Frederick,” she cried. “I don’t want to marry the duke, after all, because I love you.”
     And she ran into his arms, and he clasped her to his heart.
     
     

ALADDIN’S LAMP

 

Prologue
     
     Though Alan’s mind still followed a strand of the tangle of English jurisprudence in the books he left behind, his feet bore him out of the college and round the corner into Holywell Street. As he passed the dusty window of a curiosity shop, a blue glitter caught his eye. A sunbeam had fought its way through the murky glass to sparkle on a string of beads. It reminded him that today was his mother’s birthday, a fact liable to get lost in a head full of legal complexities. The necklace would be a good present.
     A bell tinkled as he pushed open the door and went in. “How much are you asking for those beads in the window?” he asked the stooped old man who appeared from a back room.
     “The blue ones? Half a guinea.”
     “I’ll give you half a crown.”
     “Ten bob, and that’s rock bottom. They’re genuine Strass glass, they are.”
     Even for “genuine imitations,” ten shillings was much more than Alan could justify spending on anything so frivolous. He shook his head, but he went on to poke amongst the extraordinary collection of oddments on the shelves.
     They varied