Elisabeth Fairchild Read Online Free PDF Page B

the beast a kiss upon its forehead when it looked up. He envied the animal such affection.
    “He said he might like to walk with us.”
    At that, she rose with alacrity. The dog loosed a low, threatening noise, and turned to glare at him.
    “Would he?” Sarcasm laced her words.
    “Shall I dissuade him?”
    “That is entirely up to you.” She motioned to the dog, sent him after the shepherd, without a word needed. Arms like crossed swords she clutched tight the cloak to the swell of her bosom, face lifted to the moon, profile girlish and soft, the sweet curve of her throat vulnerable. “Clear skies tomorrow.”
    His heart leapt at the prospect.
    “Will you be in a mood for walking?” he asked.
    She said only, “The best time to view the local falls is after a rain.”
    “Which of the falls?” he asked.
    She shrugged, drew the hood about her head and turned in the direction her shepherd had disappeared, her voice growing smaller as she moved away. “Most are to be found in quiet places.”
    He wondered, as he watched her disappear into the darkness, what they might do, left alone together in a quiet place.

Chapter Five

    Alexander woke before dawn the following day, anxious to see if Miss Foster’s prediction of clearing skies might be true. He was ready for blue skies, for crisp, fair weather. It was a delight too long missing from his life.
    From the breakfast room, where a maid brought him coffee and promised to have cook put together a packet of food, he looked out on a garden just as cold, wet and misty as had met his eyes every other morning in Cumbria. And yet, in opening the window, he thought he smelled a change in the frosted air, and asked the butler, Yarrow, for directions to the most spectacular of the local waterfalls.
    “Aira Force,” the elderly gent said without hesitation. “Well worth the ride.”
    Alexander woke Oscar, who clutched his coverlet closer, asking, “Is it brown trout you are after?”
    “No. A fine prospect. A waterfall.”
    His friend groaned and rolled over. “Count me out.”
    Alexander went next to his host’s bedchamber.
    “What? No warm armful to go with you?” Val croaked from the depths of his pillow.
    Was Miss Foster the warm armful Val suggested?
    “I go alone if you will not join me,” Alexander said. He would not mind going alone.
    Val waved him away. “Go, then. I’ve a splitting head.”
    “Too much brandy,” Alexander suggested.
    “Not enough,” Val contradicted.
    Content to enjoy solitude, and the remote possibility of another encounter with the mysterious Miss Foster, Alexander mounted the gray and set off into the mists. He followed the Eden northwest as instructed, through frosted farm country where sheep bleated, and apple trees and mossy oaks reached gnarled, dripping arms through the thinning mist.
    The fells and hilltops, lost in the fog on either side of him yet cast deep shadows in the dale. The promised sun was awhile coming, and when at last it bronzed the clouds above, he was well on his way, committed to the day’s outing whether the skies cleared or not.
    The sun warmed the shadows, and burned away the mist, to the tune of the raven and the wren. Light burnished the shadowed flanks of the hillsides either side of him russet and fawn. Red deer skittered from the path as he approached, tails flashing. Red squirrels flit through the treetops chattering. Fog clung to the vales, misting last year’s ferns with watery brilliance. Beneath the horse’s hooves alder cones and acorns crackled.
    The bony Pennines, to his right, cast harsh shadows on the fleshier, more feminine Cumbrian mountains to the left. The Eden chuckled wetly all the way to Temple Sowerby, a neat village, many of the houses recently built. There, he crossed the river, the darting shadows of brown trout and salmon below. Not quite fifteen miles to Penrith. At a languid pace, it took him an hour and a half. The sun warmed his back when he paused at the Two Lions for a