Whispers of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

loose-limbed, long-boned frame that he carried with the pride and self-assurance bred into him by generations of affluence and authority. She smiled up into his aristocratically handsome face, with its high-bridged nose, neat mustache, and swooping sidewhiskers, and for one spinning moment, she felt as if she had never left.
    He had always called her Jesmond, even when they were children. He was the only one besides her mother who did so, and she'd asked him why, once—why he never called her Jessie the way the others did. It had been years ago, on a gloriously warm, sun-filled day when they were all down on the shingle beach of Blackhaven Bay, in the summer, the summer before Cecil died. Harrison had waded through the surf to stand beside her, and he'd looked down at her, for he'd already been tall then, thirteen years old to her nine.
    "Jessie isn't a girl's name," he'd said in that serious, confident way he had. "It's a boy's name. And you act enough like a boy already without me encouraging you."
    "I don't," she'd said, laying her palms flat against his chest and pushing hard enough to send him staggering backward through the foaming waves, despite his height and his extra years.
    "Don't you?" he'd said, a triumphant smile curling his lips. "Girls don't push. And they don't argue."
    That hadn't stopped her from arguing, of course. But she hadn't been able to change his mind. He still called her Jesmond, and she knew he always would.
    "Harrison," she said now, smiling at the memory. "How can it be forever, when you haven't changed at all? When you still insist upon calling me Jesmond?"
    He laughed, and she thought he might take her in his arms, the way his sister had done, but he didn't. His grip on her fingers was tight, though; very tight. And his face when he looked down at her was unexpectedly strained and serious. She thought for one wild moment that he meant to kiss her, and she knew a sudden, unexpected moment of shyness. Then he let her go and stepped back, as if he, too, felt the need to put some space between them, and she wondered at herself.
    "You've been visiting your father's grave," he said now, looking beyond her in the direction from which she had come. "I can't tell you how sorry I am."
    "Thank you," she said quickly, her throat threatening to close with an upsurge of emotion. She knew he meant it, but she still wished he hadn't said it. She wasn't ready yet to speak of her father's death. At least, not with Harrison. She always felt she needed to be strong around him, to hide the vulnerable, needy parts of her soul, to be as calm and controlled as he was.
    She went away soon after that, to dress quickly for dinner, while Beatrice greeted their guests and led them into the large, ornately plastered drawing room, with its white marble fireplace and peach damask-covered settees and French walnut furniture. By the time Jessie hurried back downstairs, Warrick had still not put in an appearance.
    "He should be here," hissed Beatrice in a furious aside as dinner was announced.
    "He will be," whispered Jessie. "Something must have come up to delay him."
    Beatrice's thin nostrils flared angrily. "His brothers would never have behaved in such a fashion."
    Jessie sucked in a deep breath that did little to ease the old, familiar ache her mother's words stirred within her. Cecil and Reid, like their dead sisters, Catherine and Jane, had been obedient, steady, and reliably conventional. It was a never- ending source of chagrin to Beatrice that of the six children to whom she had given birth, only the two youngest and least satisfactory had survived. "Mother. He's only late for dinner."
    Beatrice smoothed her skirts with a rustle of black bombazine and jet beads. "I fear there is far more to it than that."
    Jessie stared at her mother's tense profile, but there was no time to say more, for Harrison was politely holding out his arm to his hostess, and Jessie could only follow them into dinner with Philippa.
    It wasn't