Timeless Desire Read Online Free PDF

English, one Scottish, situated so each owner could keep the other in his sights, preserved from violence only by the exigencies of Hadrian’s bucolic wall. She thought of the line from that Robert Frost poem. Good fences make good neighbors.
    Panna watched him as he observed the gathering troops. The light from the firepots reflected in his hair. His profile was so like the one in her library. How had a sculptor in 1901 captured someone who’d been dead a hundred and fifty years with such accuracy?
    “Will they destroy it?” She pointed to the other castle.
    Bridgewater laughed. “They might wish to, but it would be even harder to take that castle than this one. And destroying it would be damn near impossible. Instead, their cannon fire is meant to be a show of unity and strength. Tis a bloody waste of gunpowder, if you ask me.”
    It sounded as if no one had. “I take it you don’t agree with the decision.”
    “A soldier always agrees with the decisions of his commanding officer,” he said, his finger tracing the edge of the wound to his brow. “Especially when one’s commanding officer also happens to be an earl.”
    “At some point do you intend to tell me what happened?”
    He gave her a look. “I don’t know. Do you intend to tell me how you managed to get into a locked and guarded castle?”
    She opened her mouth and tried to formulate some fabulous lie, but even after a frenzy of mental acrobatics nothing materialized.
    The corner of his mouth rose. “So I thought. Tis best if we stop asking questions, since neither of us seems very good at lying, aye?” He held out his glass.
    She clinked her glass against it and they drank. His lips curved into a full smile. “The evening is taking a turn for the better,” he said.
    “I’d say that was a compliment, but you had nowhere to go but up.”
    He laughed.
    Don Alfonso’s brandy was loosening her tongue. “Okay, personal questions are forbidden, but surely not every sort is? I have a number I’d like to ask.”
    “Good heavens. Shall I sit down?”
    “Quite possibly. First, may I say I love your library?”
    “You may, but it’s not really a proper question.”
    She went to the bookcase beside the wide hearth. The space above each row of books seemed to sparkle, and only after a moment did she realize that the backs of the cases were leaded glass, too. Her eyes ran excitedly over the titles, a number of which were in Latin or Greek. “History. Greek. Medicine. Maps. A biography of Saint Peter. Oh, my goodness! A copy of John Donne’s poems!”
    She pulled the handle of the case, but it didn’t budge. She gave him a look. “Locked,” she said sadly.
    “Good Lord, the look on your face. Twould shame a saint.” He made his way to her side and pulled a set of keys from his pocket. He found the one he needed and, with a quick turn, the door was open.
    She pulled out a handful of books and placed them on a table at the edge of the hearth. A volume entitled, Animals of the Orient was the one on top. She plucked it from the stack and sank to the floor. The illustrations had been hand-colored. The endpapers were trimmed in gold leaf. The crackle of the page sent happy shivers down her spine.
    “Have I lost you?”
    She realized she hadn’t said anything in a full minute. “It’s stunning,” she said. And priceless. The sale of a single book like this might save her library. Not that Panna was the type of woman to steal, of course. But, oh! If she were . . .
    “I’ve seen a look like that once before,” he said. “Twas on an adder—just as it was about to swallow a weasel whole.”
    She laughed. “I should like to swallow this whole, consume every last page of it. Look at that mongoose. Look at that peacock.”
    “I have a peacock, you know.”
    “You do?”
    “Aye. He walks the upper courtyard, and a more ill-natured fellow you have never met. But he is the color of snow. Tis very rare.”
    This place was magical! The stuff of dreams.