Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong Read Online Free PDF Page B

from Marseilles, a place where, as it happened, he had been born.
    "I linger here because of'-his hazel eyes lingered on her bosom, rising and faIling in the heat-"the climate, madame. So delightfully-warm." He looked as if he were growing warm himself as his gaze roamed over Carolina's dainty young breasts.
    "Ah, yes, well, we must not detain you, Monsieur Deauville," Carolina said hastily, observing the direction of his gaze. "I have a new serving girl to get settled in my household today. " She jogged Gilly with her arm and Gilly turned with a start from her rapt consideration of Monsieur Deauville's purse, hovering so tempt-ingly near-why, she could be off with it like that! As easy as snapping her fingers!
    "Come along, Gilly," said Carolina, and Gilly gave up the purse with a sigh and trudged along beside her new mistress.
    Carolina hurried on toward home, and Hawks muttered, "I don't like the way that Frenchie looks at you!"
    Carolina privately agreed that Monsieur DeauvilIe had a way of stripping her with his eyes, but she was still irked with Hawks for suggesting that Kells would be displeased by her choice of dinner guests.
    "I am sure Monsieur Deauville has at least a wife and six children back in France,"
    she declared airily. "You misjudge him, Hawks. He is a harmless flirt."
    Hawks snorted, and spent the rest of the walk home listening to Gilly fabricate tales of her life in Bristol where, according to her version, she had been badly treated at home, cast out to live in rags, unfairly jailed, and had lost a lover to the gibbet-her sorrows seemed never to end until, at their front door, she found herself out of breath.
    "She'll steal your ear bobs, this one," Hawks said sourly, nodding toward Gilly as he held the door for Carolina.
    Gilly turned and made a face at him.
    "Oh, nonsense, Hawks," Carolina said reprovingly. "The girl's in trouble. She'll be glad of a place to stay. Won't you, Gilly?"
    "Oh, yes, mistress," Gilly said quickly. Too quickly, thought Hawks. And with too much of a smirk. Gilly caught his thoughts from his disapproving look and stuck out her tongue at him the moment Carolina's back was turned.
    Carolina went through the door into the cool interior of the front hall, unaware of how Gilly's sharp brown eyes gleamed as she stared about her at the handsome furnishings. Carolina had taken in a waif today-and not for the first time; most of her servants had been picked up from the gutter.
    And now-this pitiful half-fledged girl. Smiling down on Gilly's ginger head, she had the ennobling feeling that she had done the Right Thing.

Chapter 2
    Before Carolina had taken three steps down the hall, one of the servants, a girl named Betts, hurried forward to tell her that a message had just been received from
    "the master." Captain Kells would not be coming home tonight; indeed he might be detained up the Cobre River for as long as a week.
    Carolina felt briefly annoyed; had she known Kells was not coming home tonight she certainly would have postponed her dinner invitation to Monsieur du Monde. But her impetuous dinner invitation was forgotten when the same serving girl-a child of the London docks, her face scarred by her misadventures, a girl whom Carolina had rescued and who adored her beyond measure-handed her a letter and said solemnly,
    ''T was delivered by Captain Trollope of the Hopemont, mistress, who said he had it by Captain Carleton of the Bombay, who told him he could not recall who it was gave it to him."
    "Never mind, Betts," Carolina said dryly, snatching up the letter. "I can guess who it was gave it to him!"
    For her sister Virginia always clung to the forlorn hope that even though the authorities had come and searched Rye's father's house, that the present whereabouts of the notorious Captain Kells had escaped them.
    Carolina sighed-how like Virgie to believe that!
    But the letter was to her a breath of home. She paused only to give Betts, who was frowning a little as she stared down at