Elisabeth Fairchild Read Online Free PDF Page A

braggable tally of his kill Val loved most in him.
    He pushed the window higher with a squeal of swollen wood, closing his eyes to the sweet rush of cold air against his cheek, his hands. It swept damp, ghostly fingers down his sleeves, and under the lapels of his coat.
    “Bagged twice the number Oscar and I did combined. Was it only twice as many?” Val asked, his voice almost drowned out by the rattling flap of wind-kicked draperies.
    Alexander leaned his forehead against the cool pane, studying the sill, the misted brick without. The ground was dark with the rain.
    He had seen enough dark, wet ground for a lifetime, heard and seen enough of killing. He ducked his head to clear the window, and stepped over the rain-dewed sill. He did not mind the wet, the cold.
    How many young men had he stolen such a night from? How many clocks had he stopped? How sweet the privilege of rain-kissed cheeks, the smell of damp grass, and sodden loam.
    He did not stop when they called after him, did not even slow when Val warned him he would catch his death. They hung in the window a moment deriding him for a wet fool. Why be soaked when one might sit warm by the fire?He could not explain. They would not have understood. And so, he merely waved, saying, “I would stretch my legs abit.”
    They closed the window behind him, shutting out the sound of bemused laughter, ribald jests, and catlike yowling. They had their own ideas why he chose to wander. Val and Oscar had assumed the worst of him in Paris, then again in London, when he went walking for hours in the evenings, when he went looking for warmth, and life and laughter, not in the arms of the ladybirds they themselves took comfort in, but in the lighted windows of the bourgeois --the  framed mundane,  where lamplight was all it took to hold at bay the darkness.
    He walked for half an hour along the road, away from the manor, through the quiet village streets and beyond, reveling in the strength of his legs, in the heat within him exertion generated, in the unbroken stillness that fell along with the deepening gray of night. The rain stopped, and while the air was moist enough to bead the surface of his coat and waistcoat, and his boots splashed now and again through puddles pocking the road, he remained dry enough to avoid the shivers. Hands jammed deep in breeches pockets, shoulders hunched, he thought of other nights he had spent in the elements, grim nights that smelled of gunpowder and fear.
    He closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply the smell of wet pine, juniper, and rain soaked earth. How beautiful the silvered gleam of moonlight breaking through thinning clouds. How wonderful the heated steam of his breath on rain washed air.
    He thought of Miss Foster as he had first seen her, on this road. He had yet to fulfill her Valentine wish. That eyes should see .
    No--that they should be opened. To what?
    The cold bit at his nose, fingertips and ears. He had never felt more alive. And yet he wondered, why had he survived among so many who had fallen?
    The night gave him no answers.
    He walked on.
    He expected to share the darkness with no one, and yet, as he rounded a bend, hair prickled on the nape of his neck, and goose flesh rose on his arms. He was not alone. Something moved ahead of him, a ghostly whiteness in the dark. On either side of him shale rattled. Childlike cries cut the darkness, the voices of the fallen. His pulse quickened, his heartbeat pounded in ears that strained to hear.
    Ghostly white faces loomed.
    He thought of the men he had killed.
    Sheep crowded onto the road, hooves clattering, blats fearful. They skittered away, frightened by his sudden laughter, disappearing on the uphill side, tails twitching.
    The dog’s low growl took him completely off guard. An animal cloaked by the night, he caught the quick gleam of its eyes, its teeth, heard unfriendly intent in the deepening rumble from its throat, and feared he would not walk away from their encounter