Isis Read Online Free PDF Page B

ever after because of the stone walls that ran along the estate’s edges.
     
    “Here? What’s all this?” I heard Harvey’s voice and the sound of shouts from down the hallway. Then, I heard his voice just above me. “Iris? Iris? Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” Harvey said. I felt relief at the sound of his voice. I knew that once he arrived, everything would be all right. I wanted to tell him about the terrible and evil Edyth Blight, and his awful twin Spence, but I was too happy hearing his voice as he came to my rescue.
     
    He and Edyth exchanged some words while I looked down at the flagstones below. How far was it? I wondered. How far a drop? If I fell, I might only break a leg. Or both legs. Perhaps my head would crack open. Perhaps Percy Marsh would run beneath me and catch me.
     
    Edyth’s grip on my legs began slipping again, and I felt a strange freedom as I thought more and more of just dropping.
     
    “It’s all right, Iris,” Harvey said, his voice soft and comforting. “Don’t be afraid. I want you to close your eyes. Will you do that? Close your eyes, and count to ten. Count slowly. By the time you open them, I shall have you here again, up here with me. We will laugh about this. Remember the Great Villiers Trapeze Brother-and-Sister Act? Why, I’ll swing you up and over the windowsill and you’ll be laughing by the time you open your eyes.” His hands were upon my legs, a vise-like grip.
     
    I felt Harvey’s strength as he began to slowly draw me up. I heard Spence’s voice, too, and for a moment felt other hands on me—both brothers were doing what they could to draw me upward.
     
    Beneath me, Percy and his father had run over, and two of the kitchen girls had run out from the rooms below. One of the girls covered her eyes as if she were looking upward at the sun, which I thought odd given the gray rainy day.
     
    Harvey continued to soothe my fears. “Just think of the Great Villiers Brother-and-Sister Trapeze Act. I’ll lift you up. Don’t be afraid. It’s just like when we were little and I got you up on the swing. Remember? Easy does it. Easy. Yes, close your eyes, yes, close them, Iris. Here were go . . .” He began to sing that little nursery rhyme that our father had taught him and he had taught me on the tree swing in our yard on the island. “Jack, swing up , and Jack swing down, up to the window , over the ground. Swing over the field and the garden wall—Watch out for Jack Hackaway if you should fall.”
     
    I closed my eyes, finally. I felt him drawing me upward toward the window. He slipped a hand under my back. I knew I was nearly back over the window ledge and would soon watch Edyth get her comeuppance.
     
    I stretched my arms up to him, pulling at his forearms as I had as a little girl on the swings, as if I would climb atop his shoulders.
     
    A trapeze act.
     
    He gasped and groaned and shouted a quick curse as if something had caused him to fumble, and his hands slipped.
     
    I reached up again. I wasn’t afraid at all, for Harvey was not only half of the Great Villiers Brother-and-Sister Trapeze Act, but he would not fail.
     
    He was a golden boy in a world of brass and tin.
     
    I would learn later that Harvey had leaned so far out the window to draw me upward that he lost his balance and his knee gave out and he tripped over the window ledge.
     
    All I knew, as I opened my eyes in that second, was that he had somehow managed to grab me in an embrace—and we were falling—and it was so fast that it was not like falling to the ground at all, but like sliding along a floor toward a stone wall.
     
    Harvey hugged me close as we fell. I do not remember landing, nor do I remember how solidly he managed to embrace me in that endless fragment of a breath that was our fall, but he would not let me go. I remembered his lavender smell, overwhelming me with sweet scent.
     
    He cushioned me just as a bolt of lightning seemed to flash behind my eyes, and