With Heart to Hear Read Online Free PDF Page B

in time with his latest thrust.
    She came instantly. She was drowning in a flood of glory, and her convulsions pulled him down after her. His shout rang through the forest, and he clutched her to him as a drowning man would a life ring.
     
    *
     
    “Come in with me,” Elise said. She twirled out of Garth’s encircling arm and with both hands in his pulled him toward the brook.
    “No, love. You go. I’ll join you in a bit.” Garth leaned back against the mossy bridge support and released Elise’s clasp.
    Their daily trip to the stream had become a ritual. Garth liked to watch Elise frolic in the water before he joined her and their play turned more passionate. He was a more serious here, by the bridge, his love-making more urgent. But first there was the play, and all of it wove into the pattern of the music. Only now and then did a sour note disturb the canticle.
    The long shadows of the protracted summer day trailed off Elise’s shoulders as she waded waist deep in the rain-swollen channel. It sang its usual tale to her, of tumbling travels and flashing silver fish. Then she heard a new fragment, woven softly into the first. The merest murmur of fear, and flight, and death. Startled, Elise stopped to listen, to tease apart the threads of the new song, but they floated just out of reach.
    “You’re as beautiful as an undine,” Garth growled suddenly in his rich deep voice.
    The whisper of darkness slipped away. If only she could have listened harder, for a moment more, she might have understood the strange descant. “I was trying to hear something.”
    Garth laughed. “But you are beautiful. And you’re mine.”
    Elise frowned. “That’s hardly on point.”
    “Perhaps you’ll hear it again.”
    He was right. The various melodies wove together eternally and were never truly silent.
    She shook off her annoyance and stepped out of the shadows into the last dancing sunlight. The bright slanting rays caught the spray as Elise flung her arms wide, turning the drops to a rainbow of gems for a few seconds. Then she stooped and half floated on her back as the water combed her long brown hair out behind her. The banks rose to either side, narrowing her view of the sky that was shading from blue-pink to lavender.
    At the edge of the stream a profusion of white flowers blossomed in place of the single bloom she’d first tried to sketch. Their scent was richer now, their color as clean and glowing as new ivory, and their melody blended subtly into the pattern humming all around her. Elise stood and let the water run back home, dripping from her lashes and hair, trickling down around her breasts, tickling the back of her knees as she stepped from the water. Nearer now, she could hear the flowers’ sad harmony blending with the greater song, and she listened closely.
    The carriage was nearly at the bridge before she heard the crunching of its iron-rimmed wheels.
    She almost didn’t recognize the sound. It didn’t belong to the eternal pattern of song that surrounded her. Then the memory rose like an uprooted bladder-lily and bobbed on the surface.
    Lord Crandall’s carriage. Coming to take her home again. Had it been five days already? Had it been only five days?
    Elise turned to Garth and found him beside her, drawing her under the sheltering arch of the bridge.
    “I won’t let you go.” His soft words were for her ears alone, but strong as stone. A prickle of fear crept over her skin.
    “Miss Elise?” Jeffrey sang out.
    Her heart pounded. The clothes she’d worn lay scattered across the meadow and into the forest. The tent held a change of clothing. She could just see the tent’s riser over the edge of the stream’s cleft. Too far to reach without Jeffrey catching an eyeful. I’ll have to bluff my way out of this , she thought, as she heard the coachman jump from the box, weaving his own brisk strain into the music, reminding her of things forgotten.
    “Miss Elise?” Jeffrey called again, sounding