Soul of Fire Read Online Free PDF

strived, at least, to be sensible. “I imagine it must be very inconvenient,” she said. “To change shape like that. You must ruin a fair number of suits.”
    Peter let his gaze sweep over her. He didn’t notice any horror of his missing eye—lost in circumstances he was loathe to explain—nor any squeamishness because of this deformity. Instead, she stared at his face, her own grave and attentive, like a schoolgirl’s. Except always for that twinkle that seemed to hide at the back of her eyes and which might be, in fact, nothing but his own imagination. He wondered if she was making fun of him. But it was too much to imagine that a young girl of respectable birth, probably delicately nurtured, would find anything funny in a man who became a dragon or a dragon who became a man.
    Still, his suspicion of her amusement made his voice dry as he answered. “You can’t imagine. Fortunately, I’ve learned to undress very quickly.” As he spoke, he fastened his pants and proceeded to put on his shirt with fleet hands. There had been a time, in his early youth, where he’d have shrunk from the thought of performing this task without a valet. But years and circumstances, not to mention exile in foreign lands and extreme poverty—as well as the secret he must keep—had changed him. He now found it very odd to have a valet assigned to him at his hosts’ house.
    Something flickered in her gaze in response to his words, and she frowned a little, bringing very straight, dark eyebrows down over her eyes. “It must hurt . . .”
    she said. “The transformation. It looked as if it hurt.”
    She looked uncertainly up at him as he fastened his sleeves by touch.
    Like being drawn and quartered, he thought. Aloud, he said, “Yes,” and looked away, quickly pulling on his waistcoat and his coat and checking the pockets of the coat for the letters, which he felt—one crisper than the other—rustling under his fingertips.
    They recalled him to the memory of his obligations. Nigel was moving from place to place around the world, trying to keep the other ruby, Heart of Light, safe—moving, always moving to avoid those who would snatch the jewel from him—waiting for Peter to meet him and give him Soul of Fire, the ruby that Peter was starting to believe no longer existed, or perhaps never had existed and was a cosmic prank on him. And there was Summercourt, in far distant England, with its somnolent home farm, its flocks of white sheep upon the green hillsides. Peter must write and renounce it, no matter how much it hurt.
    He put on the patch that hid the closed lid over his missing eye and turned smoothly to the girl. “You’ll pardon me,” he said. “Why . . . why didn’t you wish to be taken back to your house? What happened to make you leave? I suppose you think I kidnapped you—or . . . or the dragon did. And I’m sure your good parents think the same, judging from the powerstick that greeted my attempt at returning you.”
    She bit the corner of her lip. She started to shake her head. Whatever arrangement her hair had been in, it had become wholly disarrayed through their flight, and it now hung in enchanting tendrils around her face, making her look less like a proper miss and more like a fairy or an elf of legend—an escaped woodland creature not quite at home in the human world.
    She turned her eyes to him, and he was shocked to see they were not just dark blue, as he’d thought. They were a blue almost black, deep and textured like the sky over his father’s estate at twilight in summer. If he stared long enough, he swore he would see stars shining back at him from their depths.
    She sighed in turn, and her eyelids, fringed with long, dark eyelashes, fluttered half-closed. “I ran away,” she said, “to avoid marriage. Even being kidnapped by a dragon would be better than that union.”

 
     
    SAHIB STILL WOULDN’T LISTEN
     
    Captain William Blacklock woke up to screams. They were the shrill, toneless