A Gentle Rain Read Online Free PDF

unlikely advocate for rebellion, unless one knew his personal history. He was a direct descendent of Charles II via one of that randy English king's many seventeenth-century mistresses. Truth be told, Sedge was a full-fledged earl in the British peerage, but he never used the title. Whatever social standing he'd inherited meant nothing to him; by the time he reached prep school he had been cast out as a gay son. Being gay trumped being aristocratic. On his own, he worked his way up in law and business.
    To me, Sedge was a surrogate grandfather who handled all problems, large and small. Though he was eighty now, and had turned the details of my family's estate management over to his hand-picked staff, he still advised me. He championed my small causes just as he'd championed Dad's big ones.
    Sedge and I sat before the fireplace of the main living room at The Brooks-a cozy, rambling colonial cottage at the heart ofthe Whittenbrook estate. We were surrounded by posh leathers and woods. Logs crackled against the cold of a northeastern March. In the kitchen, Sedge's longtime other, Malcolm, sang a Gilbert and Sullivan verse to Mr. Darcy. Uncle William lived up the lane in Whitten House, the famed Georgian mansion our illustrious forebear, James Innesbree Whittenbrook, had built in 1702.
    "Sedge," I whispered, my head in my hands. "I made a fool of myself at the memorial service. I insulted all those people in a moment of uncontrolled spite."
    "They'll survive." Sedge swirled cognac in the snifter he held on the knee of his corduroy trousers. "I rather enjoyed Mr. Darcy's brief song. It was indisputably vaudevillian. I was reminded of Benny Hill on the BBC. And Mr. Darcy's parting shot was priceless."
    "I stuttered."
    "No one will remember the stutter, my dear. They'll remember your devotion and your eloquence."
    "You really believe I did justice to Mother and Dad?"
    "Yes. I saw a side of you I've never seen before. Passion. Conviction. Fearlessness. Why are you backsliding into uncertainty now?"
    "I don't fit in here. These people aren't my `tribe.' That's not their fault. I'm going back to Dos Rios. I'm a librarian and a cultural observer. An efficient manager and a wonderful organizer. I can help the preserve's researchers with various projects, write reports, cross-index all their books-"
    "They're perfectly able to manage without you."
    "Oh?" I arched a brow. "Who else can turn rice, bananas, collards and cassava root into an incredible meatless dish?"
    "Kara."
    "I'm not going to blossom into a charismatic activist like Mother. I'm not going to be an eloquent leader like Dad. But I can make a heckuva sprout salad."
    "You made a promise to save a place-and its people-in your parents' honor."
    "I meant it. I'm thinking I could set up a second refuge. Acquire some large tracts of the rainforest in Peru."
    "That's simply a matter of spending money. Kara, the key to your promise at the memorial service is this: You. You have to find your own place, your own tribe. You have to take risks. Get out of your comfort zone. That's what your parents always tried to tell you.
    "They raised you to accept and appreciate and protect ways of life very different from your own. You've never applied that wonderful lesson to the world outside the rainforest. You have to care. You have to step into a world unlike your own. Anything less is just an academic exercise and a pretentious use of your inheritance."
    "Pretentious? I'd love to be pretentious." I stood. "Look at me." I indicated my blue-jeaned, sweatered self. "I can't even manage to be semi-pretentious."
    "Now, really, Kara. How one looks has nothing to do with how one is."
    "Sedge, there's something I need to tell you. When I scattered Mother and Dad's ashes in the rainforest, as they always said they wanted, I saved a little-" I lifted a delicate gold locket from my necklace-"to keep here."
    "Perfectly appropriate. Makes more sense than keeping their ashes in an urn on the mantel. I've