Hot Winds From Bombay Read Online Free PDF Page A

pond and meeting friends along the way. But if their mother said no, there would be no further discussion of the matter. Her word was law in the Whiddington household. Victoria was captain of her Gay Street ship.
    Finally, giving a curt nod, she agreed. As Persia hurried down the hallway to fetch Europa, she heard her mother scold, “Captain Whiddington, I wish you would not side with the girls against me. You would brook no such interference with command of your ship. I expect the same respect in my home.”
    “Yes, dear,” Asa answered, and Persia knew that he was melting his wife’s anger with that special smile he saved only for his Victoria.
    Zachariah’s hands and feet were getting cold in spite of his fur-lined gloves and heavy boots. It was one thing to strip down while working on deck in the winter, but quite another to stand about idle. A man could endure extreme cold, he’d learned in the iceberg-infested North Atlantic, but only if he kept moving. To remain too long in one place, motionless, could be painful, even fatal. He stamped his numb feet and blew into his palms. Maybe the young woman in the house wasn’t going to the pond with everyone else.
    But just then, a shiny black sleigh came jingling around from the back of the house. On the front seat holding the reins sat a smartly dressed native servant—from one of the South Pacific islands, Zack guessed by his big frame, erect bearing, and the blue patterns of tattooing on his cheeks and forehead. He gave a husky command in his own dialect, and the matched pair of dapple grays pranced to a halt, stamping the packed snow under their hooves.
    A moment later, the front door opened. Two bright skaters’ lamps glowed golden in the dark. For an instant, the hallway light outlined a pair of women.
    “Ah, my own aurora borealis,” Zack murmured, feeling his hopes and the heat in his groin rise once again.
    The pair shrieked with laughter as they slipped and skittered along the icy walk toward the sleigh. The driver hopped down and offered in oddly stilted English, “Allow me please to assist you in, Miss Europa? Miss Persia?”
    “No, thank you, Fletcher. We’ll walk to the pond.” The one who spoke, Zack could see by the glow from her lamp, was the red-haired beauty, dressed in blue. She was “Miss Persia,” he noted.
    “Please do have a good evening, misses.” The driver bowed grandly to them and climbed back up to the driver’s seat of the sleigh.
    Without a moment’s hesitation, Zachariah stepped boldly toward them. “Going to the pond to skate, ladies?”
    The woman dressed in smoky pink whirled away from him and sniped, “I don’t see that that’s any of your business, sir!”
    When her sister answered, “Yes. Are you?” Europa tugged her sleeve and whispered, “Persia, reallyl He’s a perfect stranger.”
    But he wasn’t a perfect stranger to Persia. He was wearing more clothes now, but the untamed beard was the same and she knew that his hair, hidden under a black stocking cap, was just as wild and sun-streaked… the tight curls on his bronzed chest as well.
    She heard a ringing in her ears, and although the temperature was below freezing and the mercury dropping fast, she felt a hot flush tinge her cheeks and an unex- plainable heat rise beneath her peacock skirts.
    Even as Persia hesitated, staring up into the tall man’s smoldering brown eyes—a detail she had not been able to ascertain through her spyglass—Europa was tugging her away.
    Zack was not to be put off so easily. He hurried after them.
    “I see by the black stacks on your house, ladies, that a seafaring man lives there. The smut-colored bands on your chimney are supposed to signal an offer of welcome to all who sail the seven seas. I’m just off the Tongolese. I’ve been ‘round the Horn and back again. I’m still walking on sea legs this very minute. Don’t I qualify for some of your hospitality?”
    Persia was being dragged along by her sister, but she