Barbara Metzger Read Online Free

followed Lady Lisanne’s visits.
    Uncle Alfred was furious. His fortune, his plans, his dreams of having Esmé and Nigel marry fortunes and titles, were all going up in smoke with one of Annie’s reeking concoctions. The girl wasn’t outgrowing that claptrap about fairy friends; she just wasn’t talking about it. Her silence, in turn, made the locals wonder all the more how she came by her knowledge. It wasn’t normal, they said, crossing themselves. It wasn’t natural. And wasn’t there a peculiar vagueness behind the girl’s blue-eyed stare, almost as if she were seeing other sights, hearing other voices?
    Sir Alfred decided to send Annie away to school, away from the gossip, away from those thrice-cursed woods. One of those strict seminaries would know what to do about making a lady out of a chit who constantly looked as if she’d been pulled through a thicket backward. Esmé could go along as companion. On Annie’s account, of course.
    When informed of the treat in store for her, Lisanne stared down at the hands correctly folded in her lap, not seeing the dirt under her fingernails that made Aunt Cherise wince. She quietly, politely, ever so assuredly, informed her guardian that she would find a way to run away from whatever school he chose. She’d live in the woods, and he’d never see her again…or a groat more of her income. Lisanne wasn’t half as vague as everyone thought. She’d managed to read her father’s will as well as most of the communications from the London solicitor. She knew her worth to the ha’penny, and knew how much of it was going into Uncle Alfred’s pockets.
    Sir Alfred believed the little witch would do what she said, disappear forever just to spite him. So he bit his lip and let her be. As she turned fourteen, then fifteen, and neared sixteen—almost of an age for a presentation—he gnawed on his own frustrations.
    How could he bring Annie to London to make a grand match that would benefit him and his children? Even if he could get her there, Annie wouldn’t take. She never cared about her clothes, wearing whatever she found in her closet. Since these were usually the taller, plumper Esmé’s castoffs, Sir Alfred hadn’t complained at Annie’s dowdiness, not in light of the expenses saved. The chit still wore her hair in braids down her back, while Esmé was already nagging her mother to have hers put up. Annie’s skin was browned from the sun, she ran barefoot half the time, and to his knowledge she had no drawing-room skills or conversation. Wouldn’t the Almack’s patronesses just love to chat about Farmer Goode’s infected thumb? What man of means would look twice at a filthy, dreamy, waiflike female? What nobleman would chance begetting an heir with attics to let? None.

Chapter Three
    No man in his right mind was going to marry a woman who wasn’t in her right mind. Sir Alfred slowly repeated that obvious fact to himself, in wonder. It was almost as if the skies had opened up and the heavenly host presented him with a divine revelation. No one was ever going to marry Lisanne Neville, not even the most desperate fortune hunter. All these years Alfred had been thinking of the grand marriage he’d arrange for Annie—and for his own advancement. But if she never married, he didn’t have to relinquish her guardianship for ten more years, not until she turned five and twenty. If, by some happenstance, he could then show that the poor, unfortunate lackwit needed a keeper, well, perhaps he could spend the rest of his days in clover.
    Yes, Sir Alfred liked this new idea very much indeed. He let Annie go her own way, higgledy-piggledy adding to her reputation as an eccentric or worse. He encouraged the local gossip, and even added some of his own when in Town, laying the groundwork with the deceased baron’s old acquaintances.
    “Dreadful news about Neville’s daughter.” Sir Alfred sighed. “Why, the poor dear is as queer as Dick’s hatband, don’t you know. The