A Midsummer Tempest Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Then do not speak of them to me, Prince Rupert.”
    “I think I’d like to, if you will not mind,” he said slowly.
    “Then do.”
    Her gaze never left him. His went to the hues which wove in the fire. “This seems to cast a thawing warmth,” he mused, “across a child born to the Winter King.”
    “The Winter King?”
    “His nickname’s new to you?” Rupert said, bending a startled attention back onto her. “Why, thus they called my father, for he reigned that single season in Bohemia. I know you know how England has been roiled by politics of the Palatinate.”
    “I am not learned, your Highness,” Jennifer replied humbly. “As you’ve heard, I’m from a wild and lonely Cornwall coast. I got no schooling till I was fourteen, and in the years since then have been kept cloistered.” Impishness broke through; she wrinkled her nose and giggled. “Please quote that not to Uncle Malachi.”
    Rupert laughed too, with a malicious glance for the sentry and his fellows. They were out of earshot if voices stayed low.
    “You’ve told me almost nothing of yourself,” he realized.
    Her bosom rose and fell. “There’s nought worth telling, Highness.”
    Gravity came back upon him. “Jennifer,” he said, “with charm and merriment and … simply caring, you’ve kindled stars in this eclipse of mine. Today I see I’ve taken them for granted. I don’t think I’ll be here much longer—” At her strickenness, he nodded. “Aye. Reports come daily in how Cavaliers are everywhere in rout before the Roundheads. The London roads will soon be clear of them, and I’ll be taken thither. … Well, my lady, if ever you have thought of me as knight, althoughupon the side opposed to yours, give me your token as in olden time—but let it be a memory of you. Tell me your life, beginning at its dawn. No matter if I’ve heard some parts before.” He grimaced. “Remind me that you are by blood no Shelgrave,”
    Did she flush, or was it only red fire-glow? She stared into the flames awhile before abruptly turning to him and saying: “If you’ll do likewise, Prince.”
    “A handselled bargain.” Trying to laugh afresh, he reached over and laid his fingers about hers. She gasped, then clung; tears trembled on her lashes. The peering Puritan in the doorway bent neck around and muttered to a comrade.
    Rupert released Jennifer and leaned against his chairback. “Not quite a fair exchange,” he observed: “because, you see, I’ll hear what’s mostly new—d’you understand I have not heard who your own father was?—while you’ll be getting yarns I fear are shopworn.”
    “How can a tale of bravery wear out?”
    Rupert squirmed a little. “Speak. Ladies first.”
    She responded hesitantly: “As you may know, my mother and aunt were daughters of Horatio Binstock, a Yorkshire merchant—Congregational, though easygoing, not a strict reformer. Mine aunt wed Malachi but had no issue. My mother, younger, wilder, then eloped with Frank Alayne, half French, half Cornishman, the captain of a ship … and Catholic. Her father having died, Sir Malachi avenged the slight by causing Dad’s discharge. Thereon my parents had to seek his homeland, a hamlet on a rugged, wooded shore where he could be part owner of a boat that fished, bore freight, or smuggled as might be.” She raised eyes from lap; finding his fixed upon her, she lowered them again. “There I grew up, the oldest child of four. Mine only education was some French from Dad and friends of his from ’cross the Channel. When Mother died, I must at ten be mistress, take care of those my siblings, and of Dad, who soon was drinking headlong as he’d lived. He drowned one autumn four years afterward. I fear we’d seldom been inside a church; but still the minister was good enough to write to London, to mine aunt and uncle. They, being childless, took us for their wards.”
    “How fared you with them?”
    “Oh, they’re not unkind—at least to us; the servants