Forbidden Fire Read Online Free

she copied Mary’s accent. She excelled Mary in their history classes, mostly because she loved the tales of brave seafarers and pilgrims and the London Company and all those others who had set out to forge a new life. She was also exceedingly quick with mathematics, since math was useful with money, and she knew that little could be done without that commodity.
    She had always thought that the town by the manor was so big, compared with the small community of the village. With Mary, she traveled farther, to the county seat of York. She was fascinated to see the wall that the Romans had built still standing, and she marveled at the magnificent York Minster Cathedral, awed by the age and grandeur, so close to the squalor in which she had lived.
    It was as if the cloud that hung over the coal village had been a prison of a kind. It had kept her from viewing anything beyond it.
    The years had passed, and most of the time she was pleased. And proud.
    Most of the time …
    Marissa frowned, wondering what uncomfortable thought hovered in the dark corners of her mind. Only upon occasion did she feel any less the lady than Mary herself. She could hold her head high in any company, and she had been attending the opera and the theater with Mary and certain acquaintances to perfect her current masquerade.
    But every once in a while …
    Then she remembered. Blue eyes touching her, racing over her, seeming to see her for what she really was. A British maid graced with a burning will to succeed, and a kind-hearted employer and the friendship of his daughter. Those eyes had made her feel so uncomfortable. Vulnerable and naked, as if they could strip away every pretense. They had done so to her when she had been a child, and when she had been a woman. They had made her feel hot and flushed and uneasy. And even now, when she most needed her confidence, they seemed to intrude upon the moment.
    â€œMary, maybe we’re making a mistake! Maybe this fellow is kind, and we should be honest and truthful. Maybe he wants a ward even less than you want a guardian! You should deal with this man Tremayne yourself,” she murmured suddenly.
    Mary’s dark warm eyes clouded with pain. She hurried anxiously across the handsome Victorian parlor of their suite. “Guardian! And I’m nineteen already. How could my father have done such a thing!”
    â€œHe loved you very much, Mary,” Marissa supplied gently. “Truly, I don’t think that he meant to hurt you. Mary, your health has never been good, and you’ve always been so kind and compassionate. I’m certain that your father was afraid that perhaps a fortune hunter might take advantage of that very loving nature of yours. And he might have swindled all your money from you. And left you. Oh, Mary, he was mistaken, but he was a good man. And he did love you!”
    â€œIf only I had told him the truth!”
    Marissa didn’t think that it would have helped any for Mary to have told her father the truth.
    Mary was in love, and she had been in love for well over a year. The problem was that she was in love with a young Irish clerk named Jimmy O’Brien.
    Marissa liked Jimmy, very much. If she hadn’t liked him so much, and liked him from the very beginning, she wouldn’t have helped Mary this far.
    Though indeed, there were times when Marissa still considered Mary to be a fool.
    Jimmy was a fine man. He was a struggler, a survivor, like Marissa was herself. He had left Ireland with little more than a good head for figures and a determination that no more potatoes could be eked from his meagre portion of land. He had a sense for fine wools, and he had managed to obtain a good, decent job with a fine merchant. He bought for his employer, and his eye was keen, and the merchant’s shop was doing much better under Jimmy’s care.
    Mary and Jimmy had met, and fallen in love. The words of warning that her father would never accept the