The Silver Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

steadfastly avoided this part of the town square ever since her return, the sight of the defaced statue far too painful.
    She knelt down now and doggedly tugged up clumps of weeds, clearing the inscription at the base.
Evangeline . . . Our Lady of Faire Isle.
    “Maman,” Miri whispered. With a heavy heart, she traced her fingers across the worn lettering. She had only been eleven years old when her mother had died and the island people had erected this monument to Evangeline’s memory. Evangeline’s knowledge of the old ways and her skill in brewing medicines had saved the entire island from the ravages of the plague.
    But the statue also honored the generations of wise women who had gone before her. There had always been a Lady of Faire Isle, counseling, protecting, and healing with her gentle magic. At least until Ariane had been forced into exile.
    Ariane’s husband, the former Comte de Renard, had ever been wont to say,
“There is a fine line between a woman being proclaimed a saint or a witch.”
    Her mighty brother-in-law had been proved right on more than one occasion. Just as Ariane had been when she had counseled Miri not to return to Faire Isle.
    “I should have listened to you, Ari,” Miri murmured.
    Miri was still rather surprised that Ariane had not done more to prevent her return. Ariane had always been notoriously protective of her younger sisters. Exile had been hard on all of them, but Miri felt as though she was the only one never able to adjust to the change.
    She was like one of those small white wildflowers that grew on the far side of the island, unable to successfully take root elsewhere. They clung to life, the shoots still green, but the petals never blossomed again. She had tried to conceal her unhappiness, but there had never been any deceiving Ariane. The Lady of Faire Isle was far too gifted at the wise women’s ancient art of reading eyes.
    Whatever she had read in Miri’s eyes, Ariane had finally consented to her return to the island. As she had handed Miri into the boat, she had attempted to smile through her tears.
    “Godspeed, little sister. And whatever you are looking for, I hope you find it.”
    “I am not looking for anything, Ariane,”
Miri had protested.
“I only want to go home.”
    Home . . . A hard lump rose in Miri’s throat. As she cleared the last of the weeds from her mother’s monument, she wondered if there was such a place anymore. Not with her mother dead and her sisters far away. As for her father, all hopes for Louis Cheney’s return had ended a year ago when she had received word that his ship had been wrecked off the coast of Brazil. The
Evangeline
had sunk during a storm, taking with her all hands.
    With her family gone, the island was a bleak and lonely place. But if Miri didn’t belong here on Faire Isle, then she didn’t belong anywhere. She felt as though she was nothing but a ghost drifting through a land that should have been so familiar to her but no longer was. The feeling might have been quite unendurable except for one small consolation.
    She was not the only phantom haunting Faire Isle.

    T HE CONVENT OF S T. A NNE’S was situated above the town on a gentle rise of hill. But the bells calling the sisters to prayer had long ago been silenced, the stately stone buildings bleak and empty beneath the lowering gray skies. The convent had been closed many years ago, the sisters dispersed to other orders—at least those who had been fortunate enough not to be charged with heresy and witchcraft.
    The only sign of habitation was the smoke curling from the caretaker’s cottage nestled in the shadow of the convent walls. It was there that the other ghost of Faire Isle dwelt—Marie Claire Abingdon, once the formidable abbess of the convent and closest friend of Evangeline Cheney.
    The cottage was rather humble surroundings for a woman who had wielded such power, the daughter of a powerful aristocratic family, accustomed to command the elegancies of