Pamela Sherwood Read Online Free PDF Page B

evenings from now! Are you sure you won’t be too tired, after tonight?”
    “Oh, I will be in top form by then, I assure you.” She would always be willing to sing for the Sheridans. After all their kindness and hospitality over the years, it seemed the very least she could do.
    “Come for luncheon tomorrow,” Amy invited. “We’ve got Mrs. Herbert to accompany you, and the two of you can work out your programme for the evening. You haven’t yet seen the new house, in any case. Our salon is almost twice the size of the old one.”
    “I’d be delighted to come,” Sophie said. “And to see your Isabella too.”
    Amy’s face lit up at the mention of her infant daughter, born the previous autumn while Sophie had been touring America in The Marriage of Figaro . “I can’t wait for you to meet her! Shall we say, one o’clock—if that’s not too early for you?”
    Sophie assured her that one o’clock was fine, and after a last exchange of congratulations, the Sheridans stepped aside to let the other well-wishers approach.
    Sophie soon lost track of the number of people she spoke to. David’s family came over to offer their compliments, but most of the others were unfamiliar. Not for the first time, she was conscious of the irony: thousands might come to see her perform, admire her phrasings, and hang rapturously upon her every note, but she was destined to remain a stranger to them, just as they were strangers to her. They could have no inkling of the person behind the performer and very likely no interest, either.
    Which was how it should be, she reminded herself sternly, or how could she have any sort of privacy worth the name? There’d be time enough, now that her concert engagements were almost finished for the Season, for her to go away and be just Sophie for a while. She’d promised herself at least a week’s holiday—leasing a lovely cottage in the Cotswolds—and then there was John’s wedding later this summer. She’d be home for that, no question.
    Home . The sudden longing for it struck her with an almost physical force. Because, even after all this time and all her successes, Cornwall was still home. A home from which she’d exiled herself for the better part of four years, but home nonetheless.
    Her eyes stung, shamefully, and she looked down, blinking hard and berating herself all the while. Not since her first tour had she allowed herself to succumb to homesickness; she would not do so now, not when she’d enjoyed such a singular success tonight.
    Vision now clear, she quickly summoned a smile for her next guests—only to feel the smile freeze on her face and the words die in her throat when she looked up at last.
    For a moment she thought her eyes were deceiving her, that fatigue and excitement were making her hallucinate. Because the man coming toward her, his face formal and unsmiling, was the last one she’d expected to see tonight. Or any other night, for that matter.
    Robin Pendarvis. Here. In London.
    Like one in a trance, she watched him approach, cutting through the crowd with the swift, purposeful stride she had loved in him. A few of the fashionably dressed throng glanced at him in mingled curiosity and irritation, but none attempted to deter him. And then he was before her, close enough to touch if she stretched out her hand… as she must not do, lest she lose herself once more. Someone of her own , a voice half-wry, half-mocking whispered in her head. Except that he hadn’t been—or only for a little while.
    “Miss Tresilian.”
    His voice was the same, deep and resonant, its slight Cornish burr more of an intonation than an accent and much fainter than her own when she’d first come to London as a wide-eyed debutante. Nor did he look so different from the way he had four years ago. Thirty-one now, and no longer in his first youth. Perhaps a little leaner, with some faint lines about his eyes and mouth. But his dark-brown hair was still thick, his eyes still blue and