A Splendid Ruin by Megan Chance EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Name: A Splendid Ruin
- Author: Megan Chance
- Language: English
- Genre: Women’s Historical Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 6 MB
- Price: Free
When I arrived at the Nob Hill mansion belonging to my aunt
Florence and her husband, Jonathan Sullivan, it was still more than
a year from its fate as a crumbling, smoldering ruin, and I was still naive
enough to believe in the welcome I found there.
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My mother had died two months ago and left me abandoned and lonely.
I thought I knew to trust only myself. But I underestimated the astonishment
of white stone and three stories, of windows glinting in afternoon sunlight
breaking through a veil of fog, of the fragrance of roses and horses and men’s
sweat blooming in the clammy, tangy air.
Had I known what awaited me in
that house, I would have done everything differently. But that day, I was too
bedazzled by the men carrying chairs and boxes and crates up the marble
steps and past the pillared portico to see the truth hidden by the Sullivans’
money and inclusiveness.
The driver hefted my suitcase to the crushed white stone of the drive.
“There’ll be a footman coming for it,” he said, moving back to the horses.
“Au’s expecting you.”
Ow? I frowned, but the driver climbed aboard and drove off to the
stables, leaving me standing uncertain amid the fuss.
Mama had never said anything of her family having such wealth, not
once, in all our years of suffering. But then again, neither had she told me she
had a sister. I should not be surprised. She’d kept so many secrets. But
this . . . Why had she said nothing of this? Perhaps she had not known of her
sister’s good fortune. I told myself that had to be the reason.
I hadn’t thought to see such a house in all of San Francisco, much less
an entire neighborhood of them. The driver had called the area Nob Hill, and
it was nothing but mansions, Gothic style and Beaux-Arts, turreted and
terraced, gimcracked with all the embellishments money could buy—and
each probably holding more rooms than the sum of those on my entire street
in Brooklyn.
In the twenty-three years of my life, I’d dreamed of such houses,
drawing their contents and imagining myself within them, but I’d never,
never expected anything like this when I received the letter from the woman
claiming to be my aunt Florence, expressing her sorrow over Mama’s death,
and inviting me to come live with her family in San Francisco. I cannot bear
the thought of Charlotte’s daughter alone in that terrible city. Please. You
must come.
The train ticket had been enclosed as if there was no question that I
would agree. Which I did; I had nothing to leave behind but a job as a
shopgirl selling gewgaws at Mrs. Beard’s Shoppe for Ladies, and a
boardinghouse smelling of talc and mutton, where I’d shared a room with my
mother that I could not afford on my own. I’d been days from having to find
another establishment, and fearing an uncertain future.
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