Cynthia Bailey Pratt Read Online Free PDF Page A

me angrier than even your poaching, Arnold, although you should know better by now, is your leaving the house at all. Didn’t Mr. Fletcher send you to bed until supper for not knowing your declensions?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Please, Arnold. Spare me. You always have an answer for everything.”
    “I know.” Despite the expression of solemnity on his triangular face, Jocelyn knew laughter sparkled in his sharp blue eyes. If the evening light were a little stronger, she would have seen it clearly.
    Haughtily she walked away from her cousin. She was glad Arnold was not in truth a mind reader, though at times he seemed to have the facility. If he had been, he would have realized Jocelyn was not as angry with him as she seemed. In a way his ridiculous arrest was responsible for her having met Hammond. A man in his sort of trouble would never have asked a girl to help him.
    She could not help wondering what his reaction would have been if he had found out her true sex. Jocelyn thought of his pleasant smile and imagined how it would deepen when he realized ... she sighed. Hammond would more likely feel trapped by gratitude than appreciative of her efforts. He would not find her worth smiling at, a girl with hair that would not grow long and a figure like a boy’s even without a costume. No one, she reflected, ever found her very attractive.
    Jocelyn’s mind flinched away from considering his actual wound, its brutal appearance sickening her even in memory. Yet, before reaching her home, she began to feel proud of how she kept her hands very gentle and of how little sick she felt while actually washing and bandaging the wound. And he did seem to be a deal better, falling into a natural sleep instead of that horrid faint.
    After a moment in which he watched a bat diving after a moth, Arnold came up beside her and took her hand, peering up at her face with a look of impish comradeship. Jocelyn struggled against giving in to his blandishments, as she well knew he calculated them with cool precision. But Arnold’s personal charm overcame the remains of her anger.
    “Oh, stop that,” she said. “We’re going to be late.”
    The garden at the rear of their house was deserted. As they came closer, a sweet breeze full of the scent of earth and new growth rushed down upon them. Jocelyn stopped and inhaled deeply. Spring was coming at last. She’d seen the green points rising up for a week, but all at once she felt spring blooming in her heart. It had been such a long and difficult winter.
    She warned, “We’d better be careful. Anyone looking out of the windows can see us now.”
    The boy sniffed at this girlish timidity. “The housekeeper’s too busy getting supper, and Granville’s fussing in his room. I’ve never seen him look so ... so normal as he did today. Come on.” Arnold went first.
    Warily they slipped around the hawthorn bushes to the old chapel, through the priest’s stair, and up to their rooms. They saw only Mr. Fletcher, the boy’s young tutor, who was pacing the upper gallery with his eyes fastened upon a book. Jocelyn shrank against the wall, waiting for him to turn his back.
    Arnold walked boldly past him, saying “Good evening” in his most piercing tenor. Mr. Fletcher never looked up, only grunting vaguely under his breath. He had obviously forgotten his earlier decree of punishment for his youngest student, as he often did.
    Jocelyn scuttled along behind Arnold. He could afford to behave so high-handedly. If caught, he’d only be sent once more to his room. Though Mr. Fletcher held no jurisdiction over her, a glance from him or anyone and she would feel forced to give an explanation of her boyish attire. She snuck rapidly down the cold corridor.
    The Luckem family lived in an old house that had been a priory before the Dissolution under Henry the VIII. Jocelyn’s maternal grandfather had purchased it from the Duke of Carnare. Though much thought and effort went into remodeling and decorating the