Cheryl Reavis Read Online Free PDF

can still feel Bud in this room. It’s—” she looked around at everything “—nice. If only he’d lived to see this day and his older son come home again—or perhaps he does see it. His boys were everything to him. Everything.”
    “Mrs. Justice!”
    “I do believe I hear my name,” Mrs. Justice whispered with a slight giggle. “It’s quite all right, though. I’d put my hand in the fire for Bud’s son.” She had such a wistful look on her face, and Kate suddenly realized that this woman had once loved Bud Markham beyond their having shared a childhood, perhaps loved him still, and Kate felt such a pang of loneliness and longing that she had to turn her face away.
    “Oh, you should know our Mrs. Russell will be along shortly, too,” Mrs. Justice said, turning to go. “Drink your tea, my dear,” she said kindly. “You are likely to need it.”
    “Mrs. Justice!”
    “Oh, dear,” she whispered mischievously at Mrs. Kinnard’s latest summons. She picked up her skirts and walked quickly toward the door.
    “Mrs. Justice,” Kate said just as she reached it. “Who is Eleanor?”
    “Eleanor?” Mrs. Justice said, clearly puzzled.
    “Robert Markham roused enough to say the name Eleanor. I think perhaps he thought I was she.”
    “Oh, that poor dear boy,” Mrs. Justice said. “That poor boy. If she’s the reason he’s come home...”
    “Mrs. Justice! We need you!”
    Mrs. Justice held out both hands in a gesture that would indicate she couldn’t linger because she was caught in circumstances far beyond her control. “Drink your tea!” she said again as she hurried away.

Chapter Three
    “M iss Woodard! Where are you!” The fact
that the question was whispered made it no less jarring.
    Am I in a hospital? Robert thought.
He tried to move, but he couldn’t somehow. Blankets, he decided, tucked in
tight. Perhaps he was in a hospital after all—except that it didn’t smell like a
hospital. It smelled like...
    ...coffee. Baked bread. Wood burning in a fireplace. Lavender
sachet.
    His head hurt—a lot, he soon realized. He managed to get one
hand out from under the covers and reach up to touch his forehead.
    Yes. Definitely a reason for the pain.
    He finally opened his eyes. A fair-haired woman sat on a low
stool in a patch of weak sunlight not far from his bed, her arms resting on her
knees and her head down. He couldn’t see her face at all, only the top of her
golden hair and the side of her neck. Was she praying? Weeping? He couldn’t
decide.
    “Miss Woodard!” the voice whispered fiercely right outside the
door, making her jump.
    She turned her head in his direction and was startled all over
again to find him awake and looking at her.
    She took a deep breath. “I’m hiding,” she said simply, keeping
her voice low so as not to be heard on the other side of the door.
    He thought it must be the truth, given the circumstances.
    “What...have you...done?” he managed to ask, but he didn’t seem
to be able to keep his eyes open long enough to hear the answer.
    * * *
    Kate took a hushed breath. He seemed to be sleeping
again, and in that brief interlude of wakefulness, she didn’t think he had
mistaken her for the still-mysterious Eleanor, despite his grogginess. She knew
that the army surgeon had given him strong doses of laudanum—to help his body
rest and to make his return to the living less troubled, he said. The surgeon
hadn’t known that Robert Markham had already made his “return to the living,”
and thus missed the irony of his remark.
    She hardly dared move in case Maria’s brother was more awake
than he seemed. She watched him closely instead. He was so thin—all muscle and
sinew that stopped just short of gauntness. Both his eyes had blackened from the
force of the fall in the hallway, and there was a swollen bruise on his
forehead. He hadn’t been shaved. She tried to think if she’d ever been in the
actual company of a man so in need of a good barbering.
    No, she