Echoes in Stone Read Online Free PDF

visit.
    “About my stay, Captain—”
    “Heaven knows you already have enough endangerment to your appetite this morning, sharing a table with a less than appetizing companion. Let’s not add acrimonious words to the table fare. Finish your meal in peace. We can meet in my study later this morning, after I’ve given my horse a bit of exercise.” He lapsed into silence, unmistakably expecting the same from her.
    In spite of his claims to a ravenous appetite, the captain had taken very little food for himself. He nibbled one of the oatcakes and did no more than idly stir his spoon around in a bowl of stewed apples. He slouched in his green and white-patterned chair, watching her from beneath hooded lids.
    The only sounds in the room were the occasional clank of his spoon against the white china bowl accompanied by the sporadic spit of rain against the windows behind the closed draperies.
    While she ate, she covertly studied her host from the corner of her eyes. She was frankly surprised he wore his long hair pulled back, leaving the torn face fully exposed. It was as if he dared her to look at him. To be repelled. Oddly, this morning, she didn’t feel the same immediate revulsion she had the previous night.
    There was no denying the buckled wound caused the left side of his face to be misshapen. A bit of finer stitching by a more skilled surgeon’s hands would have reduced the distortion, made for a finer scar. Whoever had first cared for the wound must have been a hack. Or drunk.
    It began just above his left eyebrow in the form of a white slash through the thick black brow and the upper portion of his eyelid. From there, it arced out, having mercifully—and miraculously—missed his eye. At its bottommost part, the scar met fine, hard lips, pulling the corner into the smirk she’d noted last night. That side of his face would never again be handsome, but it no longer put her in mind of a fearsome gargoyle.
    A tragic—rather than a hideous—face, it would have been less striking, had it not been so mocked by the beauty of the other half.
    Lily’s letters had told her about the years Captain Tremayne had spent on one or another of his ships, transporting cargoes to far-flung ports. Those days of sun and salt winds had left their mark in the form of weathered, bronzed skin. Fine, light colored lines rayed out from the corners of his eyes from years spent squinting into the sun at distant horizons. Deep grooves bracketed the corners of his wide mouth. On anyone else, they might have been laugh lines. Not on Captain Tremayne.
    Dashiell Tremayne was thirty-six years old, twelve years older than she, but the grim set of his mouth, the furrows between his brows, made him look older. She wouldn’t be surprised to find strands of silver in his thick black hair, but it would take more light than was available in this stygian room to spot those strands.
    It was a petty thought, but she didn’t care. She was in a mood for less than charitable thoughts. Less than a day here, and she was already fed up with Dash Tremayne’s rudeness and his mercurial moods, and disconcerted by her reactions to him. Drat it, Lily, what have you gotten me into this time ?
     

 
     
    7.
     
    These Palmer women were tricky creatures…
     
    DAMN THE WOMAN. May as well damn himself while he was at it, if he weren’t already condemned to this living hell. Dash took a sip of coffee, nearly scalding his tongue.
    How dare she sit here at his table, calmly eating as if she hadn’t overset his household and his composure? The sight of her sitting on the nursery floor with Holly—it left him unsettled. Aroused some itch under his skin. She’d been in his home only hours, and was already insinuating herself into Holly’s life. And his.
    Now Lily’s stepsister sat across the table from him, spooning bits of egg into her moist little mouth, nibbling on the edges of that damned bannock. He ground his teeth together at her sigh of pleasure when she