Lorraine Heath Read Online Free PDF Page B

what she considered his duty. He wouldn’t thank her for fear she’d rescind the offer.
    “I’ll have Lucian help you mount,” he said after several long moments.
    Nodding, she turned and tromped to the mare, not nearly as confident with this plan as she had been earlier. Perhaps everything had seemed to fall into place at dawn because she wasn’t completely awake.
    She glanced over her shoulder. Lucian was walking toward her while Clay stood in the middle of the field, his back to her, his hat clutched in one hand, his dark head bowed.
    Sitting at the table, Clay worked diligently to capture the statue on paper. He wanted Meg to see the monument as he saw it.
    Meg.
    His hands stilled as thoughts of her filled his mind. Dear Lord, but he’d forgotten how pretty her eyes were. How pretty any woman’s eyes were. It had been so long since he’d looked closely into a woman’s eyes. He wondered what made a woman’s eyes seem so much prettier than a man’s when they were the same color.
    Meg Warner’s eyes were a cornflower blue corridor that led to her tortured soul. Had he ever seen so much suffering in anyone’s eyes? He had, but none of the suffering he had seen in the army hospital touched him as hers had today.
    How many years younger was she—two or three? He couldn’t remember. Not that it mattered. Her youth had died on the battlefield with her husband. She’d buried her smiles and her laughter with Kirk. That was one of the greater tragedies of war that he hadn’t recognized until he returned home.
    The
not knowing
experienced by those who sat by the home fires was worse than anything the soldiers felt. Soldiers knew if they were alive or dead, but those away from the battle could do little more than worry, and it took a toll on them.
    He didn’t think the memorial would give Meg back her youth, but he hoped it would help put the war behind her. She was too young and beautiful to spend her life in mourning. She needed to loosen the tight bun that held her hair captive so her glorious ebony strands could blow freely in the wind. He imagined a woman’s hair felt softer than a man’s. He couldn’t remember ever touching his mother’s hair, but he remembered nights when she came to tuck him and his brothers into bed, and her hair wasn’t braided. On those nights, his father stood in their bedroom doorway waiting for her. As a boy, he hadn’t thought much about it. As a man, he thought about it a great deal, wondering how it would feel to wait for a woman, seeing her hair flowing around her and knowing she sought to please him.
    Just before he’d gone to fetch Lucian, the breeze had touched Meg, then moved on to touch him, bringing her scent with it.
    Honeysuckle. She smelled of honeysuckle.
    He thought about her pert little nose. He’d wanted to smile every time she tilted it to demonstrate her disdain toward him. If her obvious hatred for him hadn’t been so great, hadn’t hurt so badly, he might have smiled.
    The lantern on the table cast a yellow glow over his work. The house was quiet except for an occasional board creaking as it settled and an infrequent hiss of the lantern.
    He didn’t mind the quiet. What he found difficult was hearing people talk and knowing that none of the words would be directed his way. This afternoon, having someone talk to him had been pure heaven. The anger in her voice, the curtness of her tone hadn’t bothered him nearly as much as it would have if he hadn’t been starved for conversation.
    Tomorrow he’d receive a little more conversation when she returned. To prolong her stay, maybe he could explain the sketches. He never drew sketches as finely as his father had. Clay saw the images in his mind, and his hands could carve what his mind saw, but they were too big and clumsy to draw what he saw.
    He studied the drawing as he envisioned the statue from the front. The lines gave him all the information he needed, and he hoped Meg would understand what the