Elisabeth Fairchild Read Online Free PDF

Raindrops pelted his hat, cascaded from his hat brim and yet he could feel the heat of the sun, hear the waves, the bark of the seals, the cry of the birds. His voice was keen with anticipation, with memory. “Thousands of them, big as swans, with ink-dipped wings and Egyptian eyes. Such a din they make. There are seaweed nests by the hundreds upon the ground. Their fishing takes one’s breath away.” He opened his eyes.
    Raindrops glittered in her plaited hair, on the brim of her bonnet, a braided straw bonnet glowing golden in the rain. Penny’s bonnet, Penny’s eyes, but the light in these eyes shone brown, not blue.
    He shook his head, remembering the birds.
    “Ever seen gannets fish?”
    Miss Deering shook her head, raindrops trembling. He caught his breath. She was beautiful. He had not thought her beautiful, only useful.
    “I have never seen the sea.”
    “I have never seen the sea.” Penny’s words. Miss Deering’s voice. He blinked, nonplused. Odd how life, and words, repeat themselves. “Never?” he breathed.
    She ducked her head, the bonnet hiding her eyes’ dark mysteries.
    He shook his head. His hand soared upward, thumb and pinkie finger making wings, the movement drawing her gaze. “They fly high.” He turned his face to the sky, to the cold pelting of the rain, to wash her away, to wash away the memories. “Then they fold their wings.”
    He drew his fingers together, let his hand fall, as he had fallen that night in the rain, the burn of the ball in his leg, the child clasped in his arms.
    “Plummet--as a tern will, but from a great height. Straight down to the sea.” His bird hand smacked his flat open palm, cracked like gunfire, like Cupid’s best shot. His thigh twinged. He rubbed it.
    Her gaze followed the movement of his hand, stirring heat. Breath of the dragon. Breath of desire.
    She seemed intent upon his every word, her interest genuine, and yet there was a bleakness to her expression.
    “Surely you remember.” Penny had worn just such a look.
    “In they plunge--these great white birds--” He gave his head a shake. He had plunged. Reckless. “-- with such force, such a splash, one wonders if they have broken their own necks.”
    Into love. Into war. Into fatherhood. Reckless plunges.
    “Then up they pop, fish wriggling in their beaks. Worth seeing.”
    Her bonnet tilted in listening to his account. An arrested expression took possession of her even features. Like birds, her brows. Up they soared in her interest.
    “I should like to see that,” she murmured.
    “Leap of faith.” His mother’s voice. She had stood, hand raised to shade her eyes. Watching.
    “Leap of faith my mother called it, and I was impertinent enough to correct her in saying they do not leap, they fall.” He paused a moment, watching white wisps of breathy stream rise from Miss Deering’s nose and mouth. Dragon’s breath.
    “Will you brave such a leap?”
    Uncertainty plagued the eyes that glanced away from his, fear of falling. She looked toward Felicity, who drew a question mark in the steam her breath had made upon the coach window.
    “To question is a sign of wisdom.” She ventured a nervous smile.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “To question my motives demonstrates your wisdom. You would not be the first.”
    Smile fading, she eyed him intently beneath the peak of her bonnet.
    He glanced toward Palmer’s coach. “I know my own reputation. I do not deny it.”
    She went very still. Not a rabbit. Not a tabby cat, but a brown-eyed bird--watching the fox, poised to fly.
    He exhaled heavily. The white wing of his breath fluttered.
    “I vow I am changed by my own foolishness, Miss Deering.”
    So hard to read, that demur, dark-eyed visage.
    “Will you come with us, Mistress Governess? Or do you wish to be governed again by such as Palmer?”
    “Not Palmer,” she said forcefully. “Never Palmer.”
    He arched his brows in silent question.
    She drew her cloak more closely about her, eyed the dark