The Wedding Night Read Online Free PDF

Tattie's nickering snore from above stairs, her day's work accomplished and her three "baby ducks" snuggled down safely to their dreams.
    God, how she loved coming home to them. Home, where even the playful shadows and the creaking silence seemed a fond welcome, where the scent of tomorrow morning's bread cooling on its rack made her stomach grumble.
    Tomorrow.
    Tomorrow was Monday. Rushford's Monday. Damn the man!
    Mairey sat her satchel on the hall chair and was about to make a foray into the kitchen for a cup of tea when she heard familiar whispering curling toward her from abovestairs . Three ghostly little figures in glimmering flannel appeared on the landing. One by one they glided down the steps, their small hands clinging to the rail, but not very well to their giggles.
    Mairey knew these errant spirits as she knew her own heart and loved them as she loved life itself. They were the joy in everything she did, her hope for tomorrow, her sacred promise to her parents—and the reason she would defend the secret of the Willowmoon and the glade from men like Rushford.
    She stood as still and unnoticed as the spriggy wallpaper, biting hard on her tongue to keep herself from giggling as her sisters descended the stairs.
    First Anna, almost regal at ten, her pale hair veiled by what looked like the sheer lace curtains that usually hung in Mairey's bedroom window.
    " Shhhhhhh —hush your squealing, Caro!" she said none too quietly herself. "Aunt Tattie will hear you."
    "Then wait for me, Anna!" Caroline whispered, her earnest, ghostly, eight-year-old gait hobbled by a pair of Mairey's boots. Her best and newest!
    And then little Poppy, dragging Mairey's bed pillow behind her—barely six, but quick to study mischief from her sisters.
    Three little whirlwinds—her chamber was no doubt turned topsy again. Poor Aunt Tattie .
    The scamps thundered into the dining room and headed for the kitchen.
    Mairey let the door to the butler's pantry close softly on its swinging hinges; waited until she heard voices rising in the kitchen, the clinking of the honey crock, and the rattle of the spoon drawer and the plates. She made her way quietly through the pantry and leaned against the kitchen jamb.
    "I'll cut," Anna said, the bread knife already halfway through the first inch-thick slice. "Do keep your fingers out of the way, Poppy."
    "They're hungry."
    " So's this knife. You best hurry and get the butter. The honey crock, Caro!"
    Caroline only grunted around the fingerful of honey she'd just stuck into her mouth.
    They were so busy raiding the bread keep that Mairey was completely unnoticed as she drew her coattails up over her head, hunched her back, and stepped into the kitchen.
    "Ah, me tasty little morsels," Mairey said in her best wicked-old-witch cackle. "You'll give me tea with my bread and honey, or I'll eat you all up!"
    There was shocked silence, then in the very next tick of the kitchen clock, three terrified little voices rose up in a single, glass-shattering scream, rattling kettles and pie tins, and making Professor Martin's old spaniel bark two houses down.
    They screamed until three pairs of eyes found her, and then three smiles lit her heart.
    "Mairey!" Their screams of delight pierced the night again and brought on another howl from the dog.
    Mairey was tackled full-on by her sisters. They fit perfectly into her arms, and she knelt to collect and kiss them all.
    "You're home a day early! Hooray!" Caro planted a honey-smeared kiss on the side of Mairey's nose, then danced off in a melody of "hooray, hooray, hoorays."
    "You should have told us!" Anna hugged Mairey, her face flushed from her raiding, the lacy window curtain forgotten in a pool beneath the worktable.
    "Only a half-day, sweet." Mairey slid her fingers through Anna's hair, wondering when its baby-fineness had thickened to ropes of silk, full of sorrow that she hadn't noticed. "But if pirating is what I'll find when I return unexpectedly, I think I'll keep my