Kerry (Romance Classic). Grace Livingston Hill

      Chapter 1

       Table of Contents

      Kerry Kavanaugh thought when her beloved father died that the worst that could had come upon her. The day her mother told her, six months after her father’s funeral, that she was going to marry again, and that she was going to marry Sam Morgan, the multimillionaire, Kerry knew that there were worse things than death.

      Sam Morgan had been a youthful acquaintance of Mrs. Kavanaugh’s—a sort of skeleton in the closet ever since Kerry could remember.

      “If I had married Sam Morgan,” Mrs. Kavanaugh would say plaintively as she shivered in a cold room, “we wouldn’t have had to stop at such cheap hotels.”

      And Kerry’s father would say in a tone as nearly acid as his gentle voice ever took:

      “Please leave me out of that, Isobel. If you had married Sam Morgan, remember, I would not have been stopping at the same hotel.”

      Then Kerry’s mother’s blue eyes would fill with tears, and her delicate lips would quiver, and she would say:

      “Now, Shannon! How cruel of you to take that simple remark in that way! You are always ready to take offense. I meant, of course, that if I—that if we—That I wish we had more money! But of course, Shannon, when you have finished your wonderful book we shall have all we need. In fact, by the time you have written a second book I believe we shall have more than Sam Morgan has.”

      Then Kerry’s father would look at her mother with something steely in his blue eyes, his thin sensitive lips pressed firmly together, and would seem about to say something strong and decided, something in the nature of an ultimatum. But after a moment of looking with that piercing glance which made his wife shrink and shiver, a softer look would melt into his eyes, and a stony sadness settle about his lips. He would get up, draw his shabby dressing gown about him, and go out into the draughty hotel hall where he would walk up and down for awhile, with his hands clasped behind his back, and his gaze bent unseeing on the old ingrain carpet that stretched away in dim hotel vistas.

      On one such occasion when Kerry was about ten, she had left her weeping mother huddled in a blanket in a big chair, magnifying her chilliness and her misery, and had crept out to the hall and slipped her cold unhappy little hand into her father’s; and so for a full length and back they had paced the hall. Then Father had noticed that Kerry was shivering in her thin little frock that was too short for her and too narrow for her, and he opened wide his shabby dressing gown, and gathered her in close to him where it was warm, and so walked her briskly back another length of the hall.

      “Mother was crying,” explained Kerry. “I couldn’t listen to her any longer.”

      Then a stricken look came into Father’s eyes and he looked down at Kerry solicitously.

      “Poor little mother!” he said. “She doesn’t always understand. Your little mother is all right, Kerry, only she sometimes errs in judgment.”

      Kerry said “Yes” in a meek little voice and waited, and after they had taken another length of the hall, her father explained again:

      “She is such a beautiful little mother, you know, Kerry.”

      “Oh yes!” assented Kerry eagerly, for she could see that a happier light was coming into her father’s eyes, and she really admired her frail little mother’s looks very much indeed.

      “She’s always the most beautiful mother in the world, you know, Kerry.”

      “Oh yes!” said Kerry again quite eagerly.

      “You see,” said Father slowly, after another pause, “you ought to understand, little daughter, I took her from a beautiful home where she had every luxury, and it’s hard on her, very hard. She has to go without a great many things that she has been used to having. You see I loved her, little Kerry!”

      “Yes?” said Kerry with a question in her voice.

      “And she loved me. She wanted to come!” It was as if he were arguing over and over with himself a long debated question.

      “But, Father, of course,” bristled Kerry, “why wouldn’t she want to come with you? You’re the bestest father in the whole wide—”

      Then Kerry’s father stopped her words with a kiss, and suddenly hastened his steps.

      “She might have had the best in the land. She might have had riches and honor!”

      “You mean that ugly fat Sam Morgan, Father?” Kerry had asked innocently with a frown.

      “Oh, not that man!” said her father sharply. “He is a—a—louse!” Kerry remembered