Read Online Heart of Light by Sarah A. Hoyt - Free Book Online

wouldn't risk his own precious skin, his own precious comfort on anything short of a done deal.” He looked at her, and for a moment his dark green eyes were unguarded and it seemed to Emily that she was glimpsing a time when both he and Nigel had been wide-eyed, trusting children, afraid of an older brother.
    Had Carew been a bully, then? Or had Nigel and Peter, in the way of younger children everywhere, resented the older youth's ruling over them to such an extent as his age entitled him?
    “Oh, it means nothing,” Peter Farewell said. “It is only, I suppose, that Nigel and I were five years younger and it was obvious that Carew was Lord Oldhall's favorite. Perhaps Nigel resented his brother and perhaps I, his best friend, simply caught this resentment.”
    Peter gestured for his glass to be refilled, and Emily noticed a high webbing between his long, tapered fingers. It wasn't high enough to make his hands look deformed, but it was longer than that between the fingers of most people, and as such an eccentric characteristic. The first less-than-perfect detail she had noticed about him.
    He drank, though his plate remained mostly full. He'd pushed the food around with his silver fork, drawing unknown patterns and shapes upon the glossy surface adorned with concentric golden rings.
    “It's just that no one can imagine one of their older acquaintances becoming an intrepid explorer in Africa. Which organization did he favor? The National Geographic Society, perhaps? For you cannot tell me that he meant to work for one of the missionary associations.”
    Emily drew breath to speak, but she could not. Because indeed she knew nothing about who had sponsored Carew, much less of Carew's religious opinions or interests.
    “Emily,” a voice rang out, too loud, in the dining room. Several people looked over the partitions that separated their tables, to watch what promised to be rich melodrama. For there stood Nigel—pale, shocked, outraged and disheveled. Quite unlike his normal unruffled, mirror-smooth, polished self.
    His suit was dusty, stained with dark greasy smears that might have been smoke or ash. His blond hair, too short and neatly cut to be in great disarray, still managed to look unbalanced, combed all up one side and down the other. And his face was pale, his gray-blue eyes surrounded by dark circles, his expression scared.
    He stared with wide disbelief at the table, where his wife of less than a week had obviously been entertaining a gentleman friend.

 

    SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOTTEN

    Later on, Nigel would tell himself that he never suspected Emily of being unfaithful. Not for a second—though his breath had caught in his throat and his heartbeat had seemed to skip like a startled wild thing. And yet he had to own he'd felt the sudden pain of betrayal and loss, and that suspicions ran riot through his mind, though never finding words to express themselves.
    He'd thought that he'd failed Emily to such an extent that she'd already found a more virile replacement. He'd thought that Emily had always had another lover and that she'd only accepted his proposal so that he'd bring her to Cairo, where she could meet this other man. He'd thought half a dozen other improbable schemes, all of which would have meant that Emily had never loved him and that Nigel remained as he'd always thought of himself, unlovable and despised—the sickly younger son and brother whom no one could care for.
    Then the man at the table turned his handsome, chiseled features toward Nigel, whose mouth dropped open in surprise, a sound of recognition and joy escaping through his lips.
    It was a face Nigel could never forget. Peter Farewell—Nigel's best and often only friend. When school had ended, imagining for himself no more than a dull life of studying languages, Nigel had begged Peter to write to him. To write often. Nigel had thought that his only respite from boring solitude would be Peter's letters, which would echo of