The Blue Virgin Read Online Free PDF

ancestor of George. It gave Nora a sense of connection to the area; perhaps some of her mother’s ancestors had lived here. She would have to do a family tree search when she had the time.
      Guiding Darby onto the pathway along the shore, Nora paused to sit on a bench opposite Ramsey Lodge. Nora looked back at the lodge, its solid dark-stone edifice and white, ornate trim a testament to its Victorian roots. It was difficult at times for her to absorb the changes that had occurred in the last six months. Her body was altering, her small breasts and thin face fuller, the growing mound at her belly patently obvious. She wistfully watched a young couple with matching backpacks walk past as the terrier jumped up next to her. Together they watched the steamboat Swan depart for Ambleside on the far side of the lake, nosing out varied sizes of motorboats and noisy Jet Skis in its path. It was a scene that had gotten remarkably familiar to her since last March. She had fallen irrevocably in love with the land of Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter.
      Until March Nora had been working as an editor for the Oxford magazine People and Places. In her six years there, she’d moved up from reporting to editing, then found herself bored, missing the excitement of chasing a story. Her fiance Paul’s work with the Ministry of Defence kept him frequently traveling, and Nora was often alone. When she’d decided to enter a writing contest sponsored by a Cumbrian travel agency, Paul had been unusually supportive. She suspected Paul thought her desire to write her own books would keep her occupied and stop her pestering him about his long work hours. The prize was three weeks in the Lake District at the historic Ramsey Lodge, working with artist Simon Ramsey on the book’s illustrations. The time would allow her to start the collaboration process on The Secret of Belle Isle , her series about a group of fairies inhabiting the small island that split the center of Lake Windermere.
      Nora’s excitement over winning the contest had been short-lived when Paul was killed a few days later in a small plane crash. They’d been on the verge of breaking the engagement—Paul could be distant emotionally; Nora worried she didn’t love him enough to be married to him—but nevertheless it was a shock, especially when she found out seven weeks later in the middle of her stay in Bowness that she was pregnant.
      Stroking Darby’s wiry coat, Nora caressed her growing belly, wondering at the sex of the child she carried. She’d thrown herself into the work with Simon when she’d found out she was pregnant, trying to work out her mixed feelings over the man who was the father of her unborn child.
      Nora looked across the lake to the distant crags of the ancient fells surrounding the lake, tipped in a purplish haze. Green and yellow fields dotted with sheep rose along the uphill paths Simon had taught her were called “rakes.”
      “They remind me of a quilt my Grandma Tierney made,” Nora had told him when she’d first arrived in March.
      “The seams would be the dry stone walls then,” he’d explained, and commenced educating her about the history of the enchanted place he called home. Now he was coming back with her to Oxford, to pack up her flat in a move to Ramsey Lodge, where they would continue their work as she awaited the birth of her child.
      A gentle breeze brought fresh air and the susurration of the long grasses around the shingle at the water’s edge, mingled with the noises of boat traffic on the lake. Please, she prayed solemnly, let me be making the right decision to move here. Too much for this child and our future depends on it.
      Her reverie was broken when she heard her name being called. She turned and saw Simon frantically beckoning to her from the corner of the lodge, holding his hand up to his ear, mimicking a phone. It must be important for him to seek her out, she knew, hurriedly crossing the road back to the