Whispers of Heaven Read Online Free PDF

slowing for the turn into the tree- lined avenue leading to the castle. They could easily have walked the distance between the two houses—had often done it, in fact, as children. But they were no longer children. Besides, one did not arrive in response to a formal dinner invitation on foot.
    Harrison gave his sister an indulgent smile. "Jesmond is a grown woman now, Philippa. You can hardly expect her to be the same, rather unorthodox adolescent you remember, forever scrambling up cliff faces looking for fossils and risking her neck stumbling about in caves."
    Philippa shook her head. "She'll never change."
    "Of course she'll change." Harrison felt his breath quicken in anticipation as the carriage drew up before the castle's tower-topped porch. "Those sorts of activities might be acceptable for a young girl, but they're hardly suited to the wife of a man in my position."
    Philippa paused in the midst of gathering shawl, parasol, and handbag, and looked up at him, a frown drawing an unusual tiny line between her brows. "If Beatrice Corbett couldn't stop her all these years, what makes you think you can?"
    He tightened his grip on his walking stick to step lightly from the carriage, and laughed. "Don't worry. Jesmond might have unusual interests, but she's been well brought up. She knows what's expected of a woman of her station." He waited, correctly, while the groom assisted his sister to alight. Then he offered her his arm and turned, his eagerness carefully concealed, as he prepared to be announced to the
    woman who would be his wife.
    * * *
    Jessie was halfway through the side garden when she heard the jingle of harness and rattle of carriage wheels on the drive.
    "Oh, Lord," she groaned beneath her breath. Picking up her skirts, she ran across the rose-edged lawn and reached the open archway in the creeper-clad stone wall that separated the garden from the drive in time to see a tall, thin gentleman in a curly brimmed top hat and elegant dress coat offer his arm to a smaller, less angular woman with light brown curls and a lace parasol, who looked up and said, "Jessie."
    The last rays of the setting sun cast a slanting, golden light through the park to shimmer over the taffeta of Philippa's gown and emphasize the expensive frill of Harrison's fine shirt front as the carriage moved off toward the stableyard with a dignified clip-clop of hooves. Jessie hadn't seen brother or sister for over two years, but they were her dear friends and the intimate familiarity of the scene, the tightness of it, filled her with a warm glow of contentment that helped to dissipate the unsettling range of emotions of the past half hour or so. She was home, where she had longed to be, with the people she had missed so much, and she was happy.
    Quickly smoothing her grass-stained skirt over her full petticoats, she started forward with a laugh of sheer pleasure and held out her hands. "You've caught me late dressing for dinner. One might think I haven't changed a bit since I was a child."
    It was Philippa who reached her first, laughing as she enfolded Jessie in a tight embrace. "Oh, I hope you haven't changed, Jessie. It's so good to have you home."
    Leaning back, Jessie held her friend at arm's length and looked at her. Although she'd been only sixteen when Jessie left, the last two years seemed to have altered Philippa little. Of the four of them—Philippa, Jessie, Warrick, and Harrison— Philippa had always been the quiet one, her humor so low-key and unobtrusive her brother often missed it entirely. She had a kind of calm serenity, a strangely mature, unexpectedly wise acceptance of the vagaries of life that had always eluded Jessie, and she suspected always would.
    "It's good to be home," said Jessie. "I can't tell you how good."
    "Welcome, Jesmond," said Harrison, stepping forward to take her hands in his and smile down at her with his fine, English gray eyes.
    He was tall, taller even than Warrick, and thinner, with a lanky,