Carla Kelly Read Online Free PDF

and
laughed, taking off her bonnet and fanning herself with it. “I wish
he had swallowed it.”
    Omega handed
Jamie one of the rolls she had stuffed in her reticule. As he ate
quickly and tidily, with the economy of the hungry, she opened her
coin purse. The sight was daunting.
    He finished the
roll, carefully corralling the crumbs on the front of his elegant,
dusty jacket and rolling them between dirty fingers into a little
pill, which he popped in his mouth.
    “ Who
are you?” he asked.
    “ Omega
Chartley,” she replied. “I am a teacher.”
    “ Oh,
you can’t possibly be,” he disagreed. “You’re too pretty.” He
smiled. “I’m not sure that I would mind you.”
    She laughed out
loud. “Oh, you would! I’ll have you know I was the terror of Miss
Haversham’s Academy in Plymouth.”
    The dimple showed
again. “Are you what my father would have called a ‘prune-faced
bluestocking’?”
    “ Most
assuredly. Your father is right.”
    Jamie got to his
feet then, as if reminded of the situation. “My father is dead,” he
said quietly. “We’d better go.”
    Omega held out
her hand. “No, wait. You need to tell me what is going on.” She
stood up when he did not stop. “Jamie Clevenden, I just helped get
you out of an awful scrape, and I’ve lost all my luggage and my money, and goodness knows, Mr. Platter may be preparing a rope
for me at Newgate!”
    He stopped then
and hung his head. “I’m sorry. I never meant to cause you
trouble.”
    A week ago, even
last night, the loss of her money, clothing, and grammar books
would have sent her into a fit of the megrims that would have
consumed the remainder of her summer. Why isn’t this bothering
me? she asked herself as she came closer to Jamie and touched
his shoulder.
    “ I
know you didn’t mean to cause me trouble. But please tell me ...
tell me what is going on?”
    He did not answer
her, but looked over his shoulder. “Do you think he will
follow?”
    “ Oh,
yes,” she replied. A small shiver traveled the length of her spine.
Timothy Platter was not a man easily dissuaded.
    “ Then
let us walk. I ... I will talk then.”
    They walked on in
silence. “Is your mother alive?” she asked finally, when he seemed
disinclined to talk.
    “ No.
She is dead, too.”
    “ And
where is your home?”
    He would not
answer.
    “ Why
are you running away?”
    No
answer.
    Omega stepped in
front of Jamie and put her hands on his shoulders. He shuddered at
her touch, but he stopped walking. He looked her in the eye, raised
his shirt, and bent over so she could see his back.
    It was covered
with welts, some raw, red, and weeping, others fading to a duller
red. The skin was drawn and puckered, as if gouged and left to heal
on its own.
    “ My
uncle beats me,” Jamie said, his voice calm, as if he were
describing someone else. “I will not go back, even if he is my
father’s brother. He can send everyone on Bow Street after me, but
I won’t go back.” Jamie tucked his shirt in again.
    He had allowed
her only a quick glimpse of his back, but as Omega walked beside
him, she knew she would retain the ruin of Jamie Clevenden’s back
in her mind’s eye longer than she would remember the ruins of
Stonehenge or any other amazement listed in the Guidebook.
    “ Then
where are you going?” she asked quietly. She brushed off a tree
stump and sat down on it.
    The boy continued
on several paces and then looked back to see her sitting. He waited
a long moment, and she held her breath while he considered his
strategy and wrestled with the panic within him. To her infinite
relief, he walked back slowly and sat down next to her.
    “ I
have another uncle ... Mama’s only brother.” He spread his hands
out in a gesture of helplessness that lodged in her heart. “Mama
said he lives somewhere in the Cotswolds.” Again he made the
gesture. “I just don’t know where, and I’m hungry,” he finished
with all the logic of a ten-year-old.
    She handed him
the last