Silver in the Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

company. And then there is the face that I keep seeing in my mind: a man, perhaps twenty years old, with dark hair and beautiful eyes, but every word he speaks is red, as though it bleeds. What a horrible fancy this is that has struck me! And why? I am not certain how muchlonger I can bear these secrets on my own. I am nervous about the trip to Bucharest, and about staying there—so far from New York and home!—for so long, but at the same time, I am filled with anticipation at seeing Dacia again, and Radu, and meeting the rest of our family.
    But what if That Awful Man follows me to Bucharest?
    And what if the dark-eyed young man of my dreams is real? What does he want of me?
    Too many questions, but it is breakfast and I must go.

THE TUILERIES
    â€œAre you feeling better, LouLou?” Lou’s father sat down at the breakfast table opposite her and smiled.
    Lou smiled back, a genuine smile for the first time in days. She
was
feeling better. Writing in her diary had relieved some of her tension, and she had gotten a letter from Dacia, always a treat. Traveling by sea from New York had not made her ill, precisely, but the food on board the ship had not been as delicious as their cook’s at home, and so she had lost a little weight, which made shopping with her mother all the more pleasant.
    Dacia ate like a starving bear (although with considerably better manners) and was almost unfashionably slender, but Lou, no matter how many sweets she passed up, always felt a little too plump. Her parents told her that she was beautiful, and Dacia was frankly envious of her figure, since Lou had a very trim waist and curvy bust and hips. Lou had never been quite happy with it. But now that she’d even had Parisian dressmakers compliment her figure, she suddenly felt light as a bird.
    â€œI’m very well, Papa,” she said, smiling as she looked up at her father in the golden light of the hotel suite’s dining room. “And how are you this morning?” She took a slice of toast and a boiled egg, but ignored the quince jelly and croissants. She disliked quince, and croissants were too messy.
    â€œI am well, because my girl is well,” her father said, and opened the paper. “And perhaps, if she has done enough shopping, she will condescend to tour the Tuileries with me today?” He lowered one corner of the paper and eyed her over it.
    â€œI would be honored, sir!” Lou blew her father a kiss.
    â€œExcellent!”
    â€œWhere are you going, dear?” Lou’s mother bustled into the room. She was a small, stout woman, vastly different from her two tall, slim sisters. “Take the boys with you, wherever it is.” She put two croissants on her plate and got a cup of coffee from the urn.
    Lou felt a red flush rise up her cheeks. She wanted to go to the Tuileries with her father, just the two of them, just this once. Her twin brothers were ten and extremely rambunctious. They would probably run amok in the gardens and get the entire family arrested.
    The need to protest rose in her chest, and she fought it down. She wanted to argue, to shout that it wasn’t fair and that the boys should stay home until they learned to behave like civilized human beings and less like heathens, but she didn’t. She never did. Dacia would have, but Lou just couldn’t.
    â€œMaria,” Lou’s father said coolly from behind the paper, “I am taking LouLou to the Tuileries. Just LouLou. Then we shallgo to lunch. The boys may stay here with their tutor and learn to speak French. And attempt to sit still for five minutes without starting something on fire.”
    Lou made an unladylike noise, trying not to giggle at that. Or to shout with triumph.
    â€œBut boys need their father—” Maria began.
    â€œThose boys need a good whipping,” their father observed. “But since you will not let me do so, they will have to live with being confined to the house until