Never Forget Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

look both fierce and proud, not just a warrior, but a warrior king.
    ‘What do you think, wench?’ he growled.
    She thought, rather fancifully, that she could understand why a woman would let herself be carried off by such a man to be—well, who knows what? ‘You look very—convincing.’ There was a smear of dust across his cheek. His hair was dishevelled. The cloak emphasised the breadth of his shoulders and his chest, just as the army puttees so tightly bound around his legs showed off the muscles of his calves. ‘They’d have worn that thing over a plaid originally,’ Flora said.
    ‘Shall I take off my tunic for the sake of authenticity?’
    They both knew he meant it for a joke, but as she looked at him, the smile died on his face. She touched the fleece, which was hemmed with a complicated design of coloured wools. Her hand brushed against the rough khaki serge of his tunic. She snatched it away. ‘It must be like wearing a hair shirt,’ she mumbled.
    His eyes were dark, dangerous. She stood rooted to the spot, unaccountably certain that he was going to kiss her. Then he took a deliberate step back and discarded the cloak. ‘No worse than a plaid would be, I imagine,’ he said.
    Did she imagine it, that almost kiss? She did not think so, but she had so little experience, she could not be sure. She had wanted him to kiss her. Had been wanting him to kiss her since that first day when he had pressed his lips to her palm. Had it been her own latent desire that had made her mistake his intentions? Slanting a glance at him, she received an inscrutable look.
    ‘Is this the only attic?’ Geraint enquired.
    ‘No, though it is the biggest,’ she replied, which caused him to flinch slightly, before he turned away quickly and picked up the oil lamp. ‘Let’s take a look, then.’
    * * *
    They began to work their way through the rooms, deciding what could be moved, what could be thrown out and which items Flora would have to consult with her father about. Two hours later, they had completed about half of the task, and Geraint stopped to push open a skylight, taking greedy breaths of fresh, cold air. Alone in this cramped space, he’d undoubtedly have parted company with his breakfast, but Flora’s presence was proving a welcome, and surprisingly effective distraction.
    Leaving the skylight slightly ajar, he sat down on an old steamer trunk. ‘Do your family never throw anything away? There’s enough stuff up here to furnish the entire valley back home.’
    Flora perched beside him on a moth-eaten stool. ‘You know all about my family, down to the intimate details of how we live, yet I know nothing of yours. You mentioned sisters and brothers, I think.’
    ‘Three sisters between myself and my brother, Bryn, who’s the baby of the family. Bethan and Angharad are in service, Cerys is training to be a nurse.’
    ‘And your parents, what do they think of you joining up?’
    Geraint shrugged. ‘What every parent thinks, I suppose. My father will be proud I’m doing my bit for my country, though he’d prefer I did it down the mine.’
    ‘So your father is a miner?’
    ‘He is, as I was until a few years ago. As Bryn will be in a year, unless I have a say in it.’ Geraint frowned. ‘Bryn is such a bright lad. He could do so much better for himself. He’s at the grammar school on a bursary, just like I was, but he has no ambition to stay on as I did until I was eighteen. Worships my dad, does our Bryn—he wants nothing more than to follow in his footsteps down the mine. All the more so, since I’ve so signally failed to keep up the tradition.’
    ‘But surely, with a grammar-school education, you had no reason to work in the mine at all.’
    Geraint laughed bitterly. ‘I had every reason. I am my father’s son. It’s what the men in my family do. Not becoming a miner would have been viewed as the ultimate act of disloyalty, because any other white-collar job I could have got above ground would have