Corbin's Fancy Read Online Free PDF

shovelful of food, his indigo eyes snapping with life and mirth and challenge. “It’s dull,”he finally went on, “but at least it doesn’t make you sound like a kept woman.”
    “A kept woman?!” Fancy half shrieked, ready to pounce on her “patient” and tear his ears off.
    “Have patience with me,” he urged, speaking around a bite of honeyed toast. “After all, I’m an invalid.”
    “You’re healthier than I am!” cried Fancy, falling neatly into his trap.
    The impossibly blue eyes danced. “I’m healthy, all right. One of these days—or nights—I’ll prove it to your satisfaction. But let’s not tell my brother, all right? He might make you go away and if that happens, I guarantee you, I’ll be unsalvageable.”
    Fancy kept her distance, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave the room. Or, more specifically, the man. Drat it all, what was it about him that drew her to him, even as it repelled her? “You’re already unsalvageable,” she retorted. “How a man as nice as Keith could have a brother like you is beyond me!”
    Unwittingly, she had nettled him. He flashed her a quick, attentive look, then pushed away the plate he had raided so voraciously only moments before. “‘Keith,’ is it? You’re on very informal terms with my brother, it would seem.”
    “We’re friends,” said Fancy, understanding but wishing that she didn’t. Keith Corbin was practically the first man she’d encountered, since her father, who liked her for herself, and she valued that.
    “He’d be quite a catch,” reflected Jeff. “Lots of money, all this land. And he’s a solid citizen in the bargain. Too bad he’s taken.”
    Fancy was so outraged that she couldn’t speak.
    “I, on the other hand, am quite free. And I’m no pauper,” Jeff went on.
    “And no ‘solid citizen,’ either, I’ll wager,” sputtered Fancy, again possessed of a need to slap this man silly.
    Jeff laughed, rubbing his strong, recently shaven chin with one hand. “Unfortunately, you’re right about that. But you’re not exactly respectable yourself, are you?”
    Fancy was stung, and worse, she was suddenly certain that he remembered her from Port Hastings. “W–What makes you say that?” she countered.
    “It’s just a guess,” he said, his eyes averted.
    “No, it isn’t. You know me, don’t you?”
    “Should I?”
    Fancy bit her lip, unable to answer.
    Jeff sat back in his chair, crossing his long legs at the ankles, his magnificent face reflective and far away. “‘Fancy Jordan,’” he mused, again rubbing his chin. “‘She sings. She dances. She does magic.’”
    Fancy was now not only unable to speak but unable to move. She waited, in horror, her hands gripping each other in white-knuckled dread.
    “Let’s hear you sing,” said Jeff, stunning her anew. “Better yet, why don’t you sing and dance?”
    “H–Here?”
    “Why not?”
    “I couldn’t. I–I won’t.”
    “Why not?” he asked again.
    “I wasn’t hired to do that.”
    “What exactly were you hired to do?”
    “Why, to t–take care of you!”
    “Take care of me, then. Right now, a song, a dance, or a bit of magic seems crucial to my recovery.”
    Fancy trembled, certain that he had recognized herand yet unable to believe that he could have. She couldn’t have sung then if her life had depended upon it, and dancing, under the circumstances, would be ludicrous. Still shaking a little, she approached Jeff, reached out, and drew a half-dollar from behind his right ear.
    “A parlor trick,” he said derisively, his blue gaze boring into Fancy now, hurting.
    Tears burned in Fancy’s eyes, threatening to spill over. “What is it that you want from me?” she whispered.
    “I want you to get out,” he breathed, with incredible cruelty. “Leave me alone. Now.”
    Wildly confused and injured in the bargain, Fancy turned with dignity and marched out of the room, closing the door behind her. In the hallway, however, she sank