Julie Anne Long Read Online Free PDF Page B

French wink.
    Lady Tremaine gave the modiste a brief reproving frown and waved a lavender pomander under Rebecca’s nose.
    But when her mother wasn’t looking, Rebecca returned the modiste’s wink. The modiste looked startled.
Let her wonder
, Rebecca thought.
    Stripped to her underclothes, Rebecca submitted to being draped and pinned for the rest of the afternoon. She felt strangely removed from the proceedings, as though she had vacated her body and was watching a group of strangers from a polite distance.
This is not really happening
, she told herself.
It simply cannot be happening.
    But when she saw herself in the mirror swathed in creamy satin, her mother and the modiste standing behind her beaming in pride, Rebecca finally understood, without a doubt, that it was.

Chapter Three
    C onnor was rubbing away at the scuffs on Sir Henry’s favorite saddle when the tack room suddenly darkened.
    He glanced up from his work to find Rebecca hovering almost hesitantly in the doorway, blocking the sunlight. He was immediately suspicious; “hesitant” was not a word one typically associated with Rebecca Tremaine. She was wearing the pale pink riding habit he knew she despised—the color had been her mother’s choice. Secretly, however, it was one of his favorites; the pink seemed to collaborate with the multitude of reds in her hair to do wonderful rosy things to her complexion.
    And then he glanced down and saw that she had a very good reason to be hesitant.
    “Wee Becca, where on earth did ye get a musket?”
    “It’s Papa’s. From the war.”
    “And does he know ye’ve taken it out?” Silly question. It was hardly as though Sir Henry Tremaine would hand a musket to his youngest daughter with his blessings:
Go shoot something, m’dear.
Though Sir Henry had taught Rebecca to shoot with pistols, he had stopped short of bringing out the larger firearms, perhaps remembering just in time that she was in fact a girl.
    “Papa is away in St. Eccles today. And he didn’t lock it up or hide it.”
    “Well, he doesna lock ye into your room at night, either, does he, and just look at the trouble
that
wee bit of oversight has caused.” Connor shook his head ruefully. “Your poor, trusting da. Wee Becca, a man is entitled to believe his muskets are safe from his daughters.”
    “Connor, I’d like to shoot a musket at least once in my life before I am married and can no longer do anything at all.”
    To Rebecca,
anything at all
no doubt meant galloping a horse astride at breakneck speed or firing pistols at apples or laughing too loudly or reading and quoting from controversial books or . . .
    Or simply being Rebecca.
He felt again that strange sense of strangulation on her behalf; his throat tightened. He massaged his neck absently, then swiveled to resume rubbing vigorously at the saddle, as though he could somehow erase the events of the past few days.
    He turned to her again after a moment. “Well, and I suppose ye’d like me to teach ye?”
    “Well . . . you were a soldier, were you not?”
    “Aye. I was a soldier.”
    “I’ve brought a picnic.” She lifted her other arm; a basket dangled from it.
    “Oh, well, in
that
case.” He rolled his eyes.
    “Do women in America shoot muskets, Connor?”
    He smiled at the shameless appeal to his favorite topic of conversation: America. A place he longed to visit, and one day planned to call home. Rebecca had always been a rapt audience for his musings about America.
    “No doubt American women shoot all manner of things with muskets, wee Becca. Wild beasts, Indians, their husbands. But
you
,” he reminded her, “are English.”
    Rebecca held both the musket and the picnic basket up before her, mutely beseeching.
    She would go whether he accompanied her or not, of that Connor was certain; she’d probably find a book about how to load muskets, or some such nonsense, and attempt it herself. He sighed. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to teach Lord Edelston’s