[Samuel Barbara] Lucien's Fall(Book4You) Read Online Free PDF Page B

remember?"

    "Carefully."

    "And on this side?"

    Madeline gave him a smile and tapped her forehead. "The pattern must be memorized."

    "And you have?"

    "It’s been my retreat since I was a child." Here, on her own ground, in the one place on earth that belonged to her, Madeline felt calm. Lifting her head, she inhaled the scent of the yews, and the damp, bruised grass under their feet. It was longer here, unkempt, and her feet were quite wet before long. As they rounded a corner, Madeline gave him a secretive smile. "The claire-voies in this maze are extraordinary," Madeline said. "There are more than twenty of them."

    "Claire-voies?"

    "Yes." Madeline lifted a hand to indicate he should precede her around a corner, and he did.

    There, framing a view of great expanse of the wild gardens beyond, was a window cut into the hedge. Lord Harrow paused midstep. Madeline thought he looked almost stricken before he recovered and glanced down at Madeline. "Breathtaking, isn’t it?"

    She looked at the view, painted pale gold with the soft fingers of morning, the greens in hues from gray to yellow, the stillness unbroken but for a cluster of ravens, shiny black, picking in the grass for breakfast. "Yes," she replied. "The whole maze exists only for the sake of beauty. It’s extraordinary."

    He lifted a brow. "You strike me as a woman who’d find beauty for its own sake a wasteful thing."

    "No. Oh, no," she said, and let her gaze touch the exquisite view framed by the claire-voie. "Is beauty not the easiest of all things to claim? It’s there for anyone."

    Madeline felt his restless body quiet. In a resonant voice like a cello, he quoted:

    "Full many a glorious morning have I seen
    Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
    Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
    Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy."

    Shakespeare. Madeline recognized it immediately, but in his mouth, the sonnet sounded unlike it had in her own mind when she read it. He somehow gave the words a life and music she’d never uncovered. The lyrical rhythm stung her.

    With a sharp breathlessness, Madeline looked at him. His head turned and their gazes collided. In the good, gray light, she saw that his eyes were quite remarkably beautiful, dark blue studded with sparks of yellow and green that seemed to have their own source of light.

    Jeweled.

    Abruptly, she turned around and started walking the direction they had come.
    Foolish of her to think there was any hope of resisting a man as accomplished in the art of seduction as Lord Esher.

    "Lady Madeline! Wait! Why do you run?"

    She whirled. "It was unseemly to bring you in here. I was wrong to do it."

    "I’ve frightened you," he said. "I vow that was not my intention."

    "It is difficult to seduce a terrified woman," she said acerbically.

    He touched his chest and held out his hand in a gesture of sincerity. "Nothing I did here was for intent." He glanced over his shoulder and back to her. "I swear by my mother’s grave I’ll not try to seduce you here."

    Again he looked back, toward the path leading inward, to the heart of the maze, with a yearning Madeline recognized on some wordless plane.

    He waited, without moving or cajoling, only watching her with that pained, jeweled gaze. The stillness was gone from his body, and she felt his need to go on as clearly as a shout.

    She was mad to do it, mad to open even the slightest hint of trust, but she sensed they were alike somehow, in some way hidden deep within both of them, and she wanted to find out what it was they shared. "All right," she said. "The maze is neutral ground."

    "Not even simply neutral," he said soberly. "It’s yours."

    The claire-voie pricked music to life in his nerves. New notes, notes that he’d not heard. The ravens, so black against the green, the sky pale above, the dazzling butter yellow sunshine—all framed with the stillness of the living window, green and silent, made music burst to life in him.

    And