A Heart's Treasure Read Online Free PDF

loaded coach he’d volunteered to drive, and frowned. “If need be, we can build a full encampment out of all the baggage you ladies have brought along.”
    The ladies had only shaken their heads at him, saying that if they were not to have maids, then they must at least have access to their accoutrements. After a great deal of fuss, the coaches had been readied, and now they’d left the city behind, to everyone’s excitement and not some little relief.
    The relief dissipated soon, as the afternoon grew heavy with heat, the open windows of the ladies’ coach only allowed dust to filter in and very little in the way of a breeze, and the conversation melted away by steady degrees. Summer leaned back against the squabs, a lacy handkerchief pressed to her nose and mouth, her face growing a little paler as they traveled onward down each mile.
    “Remind me, whose idea was this?” Genevieve murmured into the growing gloom as evening approached. The brown curls which usually danced on her forehead were stuck to it now.
    “Kenneth’s,” Laura and Penelope answered together, the one with a sour note, the other with resignation.
    Summer merely coughed, her bonnet bobbing forward and falling over her face until she reached up, untied the strings, and discarded it altogether as the other ladies had already done. Her white-blonde hair was also stuck to her pale face. Genevieve sat forward and took her friend’s hand. “Just a little farther, I think,” she smiled, and Summer smiled back, however unsteadily.
    “I’m well,” she said, and everyone knew it was not quite true, for Summer was the kind who could not dance two dances together without respite, and fainted at the sight of blood. Her health was not exactly infirm, but easily disturbed, as though to match the light, lilting voice that she seldom raised.
    Genevieve looked at her, longing, as usual, for something of that delicacy, that irresistible softness. She herself was as hearty as the cattle on her father’s estate, and just about as subtle. It was unfair to compare herself with Summer, of course, who was slender as a reed, and walked as though on water, but Genevieve did feel as though her five feet and three inches was something quite monstrous next to this tiny, sweet-faced creature. Her own dark brown hair seemed plain when next to that ethereal blonde head, her dark brows and long lashes coarse beside those airy arches, and her curves almost obscene when seated near that slender form.
    Despite all of that, Genevieve loved the dainty creature she called friend. Summer was everything gracious…so much so, in fact, that the lady had a knack of getting what she wanted; it was difficult to resist when such a delicate flower, in charming serenity, asked for something.
    As to the other ladies sweltering inside the coach: Laura never quite forgot she was the eldest among them, and the death of her almost-fiancée had only added to her sometimes cynical air. Penelope was the least easily labeled. She was often gracious, like Summer, but there was something reserved about Penelope, especially of late. She could certainly be counted on to hold one’s secrets, as she held her own quite well. Genevieve counted both among her dearest friends…but she wondered sometimes if she really knew Penelope’s inner thoughts or cares as well as she thought she did.
    Michael rode past the coach on his horse. Genevieve felt her mouth bend up, remembering how vexed her brother had been at having to take her as his hunt partner. She’d never give him the satisfaction of letting him know she, too, would have preferred a different partner. From the standpoint of the game, the two of them could be clever when they put their wits together, so that was to the good. On the other hand, that he was not Summer’s partner was perhaps a mistake. Michael was entirely too unhurried about this marriage of his. Genevieve failed to see how he could have escaped falling in love with his fiancée,