Night Winds Read Online Free PDF

their wild beauty as they flew over the dunes.
    He thought about those delicate hands, the same that splattered him with sand . They must have strength as well as beauty. How must they look as she hammered metal or put links to the flame to close them? How odd to think about a woman shaping jewelry, shaping anything as valuable as gold. Something in the image awakened in him an unexpected pang of nee d a surprisingly animal sensation.
    Pushing aside the unwelcome thought, Phillip instead recalled those lifeless puffs of feathers that lay upon the bottom of that cage . Had it been her father who had thrown them, out of anger? Was it any of Phillip’s business if he had?
    A sultry breeze stirred the curtains and brought to him the scent of Mother’s roses . He smiled at their sweetness, and at the distraction that they brought to mind. They reminded him his rose was coming home tomorrow, his sweet rose, his Rachel. He pushed aside his doubts and thought about her long, white neck. He remembered how she’d let him kiss it, once, before she left for Houston and a visit with her older sister. He imagined a day, not too distant, when he’d unpin her glossy, dark brown tresses and let them curtain him as he went about a lover’s toil.
    A husband’s, come next spring . He smiled, imagining the way her eyes shone last month when he presented her with Grandmother’s ring, the same that Mother gave him to signal her approval of his choice. Rachel, his love, how he longed to touch her! As he allowed his mind free rein, Phillip barely noticed how the waist-long hair he dreamed of had lightened to red-gold.

CHAPTER FOUR
    He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.
    Proverbs 11:2
     
    *Thursday, September 15, 1875 *
     
    “Take some tea.” Aunt Alberta pushed the hot cup into her hands without waiting for a response.
    Shae leaned out of bed to place it on the night table, untouched . As her eyes adjusted to the light, she wondered what was wrong.
    “Your father won’t wait for you, so quit moping, Mary Shae.”
    Of course. The light. Without the cage bars to impede it, the morning light came unbroken to her room. Shae missed the silhouetted figures of tiny finches hopping in that cage. She even missed the dream that she would one day lift it from its hook and remove it to her new home, when she married Ethan.
    The man himself had never figured prominently in those fantasies . In her mind, he would ever be away on business, and she would be left to paint in one of the mansion’s massive halls. A childish fancy, she realized. Marrying Ethan had been a poor plan from the start, either to fulfill her father’s dreams of prestige or her own, of escape. She’d been wrong to try to use the man that way.
    “I’m not going to the store today,” Shae announced.
    “You’d feel better if you did.”
    She shook her head . “I have to go see Ethan, to apologize.”
    “Too late for that, my dear . You’ve humiliated him publicly. No man forgives that.”
    “I don’t care.” She fidgeted with the lace of her sleeping gown . “No, that’s a lie. I do. I was wrong to do that to him. I was wrong to agree to marry him at all. I’m taking back his ring.”
    She picked up the gold band, with its flawless, oval ruby surrounded by white diamonds . What a relief it would be to dispose of the elegant burden. She’d always worried she would chip or discolor it with the tools of her trade, so she often took it off. Then she fretted she would lose it or that someone might construe her bare fingers as ingratitude. She might enjoy working with precious materials, but she didn’t feel equal to possessing them.
    Alberta sniffed disdainfully and crossed her thick arms . “You’ll do no such thing. We’ll send Lucius to return it, or another friend of your father’s. It would be entirely improper for you t o ”
    “  But I am entirely improper, aren’t I? That’s what you’ve been telling me forever. ‘Proper ladies