Flowers From The Storm Read Online Free PDF

instantly, the kind of look he must use on those women who fell willingly under his influence and into his arms. Even she, who at twenty-eight had only been courted once, by a very conventional doctor who had accepted her refusal with painful regret and then engaged himself to a Jane Hutton and left the Quaker Meeting within the half-year, even Maddy could identify that intense and faintly questioning glance and sense the kind of power it was meant to wield.
    Therefore, when he only held out the sheaf of papers toward her and asked if she would transcribe the equations on the slate for him as he spoke, it was something of an anticlimax. She looked down at the papers. “Thou dost not wish to do it? The slate is just behind the podium. Most of the speakers—”
    “I don’t,” he said flatly.
    “Come, come.” Mr. Milner had the door open, admitting the low rumble from the lecture room. “Let us all go at once, then. Mr. Timms?”
    It was Jervaulx himself who took her father’s arm, guiding him into the hall and down the steps to the first seat. The president waved Maddy on up to the row of stiff-backed chairs on the podium; the duke followed her, their steps loud and hollow on the wooden platform. He made a gentle adjustment of her chair as she sat and flicked back his coattails in an elegant, relaxed way as he took the place beside her.
    The hall quieted as President Milner stepped up to the lectern, turning the shade of the little gas lamp and clearing his throat. Maddy gazed out at the wash of faces, each one underlined by a white collar that seemed to float in a background of uniform black. She’d attended many meetings, of the Analytical Society and the Friends both, occupying a seat in the back benches with her papa, but never had she sat in front of any sort of audience before, let alone one so large. She told herself that everyone was attending to the president, who’d called the meeting to order and begun introducing the paper and describing her father as co-author, but it was easy to recall how one’s mind and eyes wandered as a spectator. Several of the gentlemen in the first few rows were most definitely looking past President Milner: at herself or the duke, she couldn’t be certain, but she felt agonizingly exposed in her plain silk and pearls.
    She felt acutely aware, too, of how real and solid and inescapably large Jervaulx seemed sitting next to her, in midnight blue, his white-gloved hands clasped in his lap, not a bit of quiver or restlessness in them, which made Maddy force herself to stop the squeezing and unsqueezing of her own fingers. He seemed very certain of himself, quite easy and oblivious of the weight of attention focused on him as President Milner expressed the honor felt by the gathered company in having such a luminary as Christian Richard Nicholas Francis Langland, His Grace the Duke of Jervaulx, Earl of Langland and Viscount Glade, condescend to address the London Analytical Society this night.
    The duke rose to applause. He carried no notes, having handed the papers to Maddy. She might have known that he would have a talent for speaking in a pleasant, relaxed voice, which nevertheless carried as he announced gravely that this lecture was dedicated to the memory of his late tutor, Mr. Peeples, an estimable, learned man, a credit to his profession, worthy of his pupil’s everlasting regard and respect; and the duke really was sincerely sorry about the dead smelt in the lesson book.
    They all laughed, even her papa.
    It pained Jervaulx, the memory of that smelt, and somehow the smelt led to the page of the book it had adorned, and that page led to the parallel postulate of Euclid, and differential geometry, and then amid the lingering chuckles from some obscure jest about his passion for examining into the allure of certain irresistible curved surfaces, he was turning to nod expectantly at her.
    Maddy jumped to her feet, took up the chalk and began filling the big slate. She was