[Barbara Samuel] Night of Fire(Book4You) Read Online Free PDF

to England, where he had been happy with her, so he sent for us: my brother and my two sisters, and my cousin who lived with us."
    "So many of you!"
    "And we added two sisters and a brother before we finished." She lifted her brows. "It's a great blessing that we all lived, in spite of the fevers and the travel."
    That soberness, that hint of deepest sorrow, moved over his dark eyes. "Yes."
    Too late, Cassandra remembered he had lost his brothers and mother to fevers only a short time before.
    She put her hand on his sleeve without thinking. "Oh, I have been thoughtless! Forgive me."
    He looked at her hand and Cassandra wondered if she ought remove it, if it was too familiar. But selfishly, she wanted to touch him, feel the shape of his forearm beneath the fabric of his coat. A small, guilty pleasure.
    And because he seemed captured by the sight of her hand against his sleeve, she was free to drink in his face without fear of giving the wrong impression. Each time she was caught by some new detail. It was his lashes now, not long, but very lush and thick and black. When he abruptly lifted those lashes, they trimmed the depth of darkest irises with a kind of extravagance that made her unwilling to shift her gaze.
    He put his hand over hers. "It should not be only sorrow that comes when I remember them," he said quietly, "for while they walked here, they gave me great joy. There is where my heart should go when I think of them."
    Such large eyes for a man, so expressive and deep. Cassandra peered into them, feeling no oddity in her need to see within, no need to turn away even when the moment stretched to two and three and four, the world quiet but for the simplicity of looking directly into his eyes—and allowing him to look back into hers. His index finger traced the shape of her thumbnail.
    Then—she was aware of the shift, a flicker, perhaps, in those eyes—it seemed they drew a little closer, then apart again at nearly the same instant. She took her hand away and put it in her lap.
    "Tell me your tale, Cassandra. And then I will tell you mine."
    So she told him of the long, terrifying journey to Martinique when she was six and believed in sea monsters. They'd been caught in a terrible storm for three days, where the ship pitched and rocked dangerously, threatening hourly to spill them into the hungry waves. But they had survived and gone on to the island, where they discovered the rest of her father's family—Monique, the slave who had been his mistress before he returned to England and married, and then again when his heart was shredded in grief over the loss of his wife in childbirth, and Monique's children: Gabriel, the eldest of all of them, and Cleopatra, the youngest.
    In Martinique, Cassandra had discovered books and words and writing, and the pleasure of her own company. Away from the strictures of English country life, Cassandra had made up her mind that she, too, would be a writer.
    "So, you see, I have good memories of myself when I see the sun sink into the sea. Memories of what I saw before the world saw something else."
    "Ah, bravo! That's a very good story to begin. Thank you."
    "And now yours, sir." She allowed him to pour another splash of wine into her glass, though she knew she should halt it soon. It was heady wine, musky and rich, and she could feel it tingling in her blood.
    "How came you to be sitting here tonight? How came the poet to his words?"
    He let go of a humorless laugh. "I am no poet, madam."
    She regarded him steadily. "Ah. I see I am to protest and insist you do not know the worth of your own talents. Shall I beg for a couplet?"
    A hand flew to his chest. "The lady's tongue is sharp!" That glitter returned to his eyes. "As sharp as a hidden dagger."
    "Sharp as the knock of a creditor on a poet's door."
    "Sharp"—he paused, eyes shining—"as the blue edge of lightning on a summer's eve."
    Cassandra laughed, and it felt as if something were breaking free within her, as if the laughter