Love Is a Rogue (Wallflowers vs. Rogues #1) - Lenora Bell Page 0,28

on the largess of a duke. First your father, and now your brother.”

He wasn’t ashamed of his humble origins. He wouldn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t.

“Oh.” Her pale lashes fluttered closed for a moment. “I didn’t think about what I was saying.”

“In case you haven’t realized, Your Ladyship, you and I are from two vastly different worlds.”

She inherited bookshops and treated it as a fun little diversion. Let’s transform this bookshop into a clubhouse for lady knitters! Only a pampered and privileged lady would ever have a notion like that.

To own property, to own land, was to have power in this world.

Ford was an exile—from Cornwall, from London—his place was on a ship, drifting across oceans and touching land only briefly. But even so, his goal since he joined the navy was to earn enough money to purchase land near London and build a house. He wouldn’t live in the house very often, but his mother could use it when she visited, and it would be a symbol that he’d escaped the yoke of servitude his father wore.

“And yet the circumference of your life is wider than mine.” She traced her finger down the lines of his sketch. “My mother narrows the scope of my experience as much as possible. I can only follow prescribed, preapproved paths through life. While you’ve explored the world with the navy.”

“Mostly the Mediterranean. I was stationed off Greece for several years.”

“I’ve never left England’s shores and I probably never will.” She turned to study the portrait hanging over the bed. “This must have been Aunt Matilda’s bedchamber.”

The portrait showed a young woman with bright red hair sitting on a bench heaped with gold velvet cushions and reading a leather-bound book.

“I wish I’d known my aunt,” she said with a wistful expression.

“Why didn’t you know her?”

“She was my father’s eldest sister. She fell in love with Mr. Castle and was disinherited by the family for making an imprudent marriage with a shopkeeper. It’s nearly unfathomable to me that she lived so close by and I never even knew she existed.” Her brows knit together. “It’s not right.”

“No, it’s not right, but it’s common practice. My mother, Joyce, was born into a wealthy tradesperson’s family and fell in love with my father, a mere carpenter. She was cut off and disowned for her choice. She and her father have never reconciled.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

It made him furious that he would never know his aunt, or his nieces. His mother only visited her sister once a year, in utmost secrecy, for fear of retaliation from his grandfather. She would arrive in London for their yearly meeting soon, and then she would bid Ford farewell.

He threw the pencil down. “I always laugh when I hear people express the sentiment that our world should live in peace and harmony. How can we achieve peace between nations when families are torn apart so easily and so often?”

Lady Beatrice nodded her agreement.

“I’ve seen enough of war,” he said bitterly, “to know that men thirst for it, that they say they want a diplomatic solution, but instead they charge toward it, guns at the ready, pointed straight for hell. Families are no different. One transgression and a beloved daughter, or a sister, becomes a stranger, an enemy.”

“It’s tragic. How I should have liked to know my aunt. Anyone who reads a book while having a portrait painted would have been a bosom friend of mine. She was very beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“You look like her,” Ford pointed out. “The same red hair and slender figure. The same pale brows and straight little nose. And definitely the same expression of pure bliss when you’re turning the pages of a book.”

Lady Beatrice stared at him. “Don’t be silly. I look nothing like her.”

“You don’t see it?”

“Mr. Wright.” She turned fully toward him, into the light from the windows. “I was born with palsy of the facial nerve caused by damage from the instruments the doctor used during my birthing. I speak plainly of it, using none of the euphemisms my mother employs. It’s become more manageable and less noticeable over the years, but there’s no use attempting to ignore the condition, hide it, or pretend that it doesn’t exist. This is my face. Nothing more, nothing less. And I’m no beauty.”

Her vehement denial gave him pause. He’d read her diary entry, but that had been written by a young girl in a fit of passionate humiliation. Surely she’d realized by now how lovely