yesterday, Cupid? Was the force in full force?”
“Splendid,” Alexander said. “I chanced upon a familiar face.”
“Did you? Who?”
He had both their attention.
“My Valentine,” he said, picturing her in his mind in the moment he had kissed her, savoring the memory.
“Touch-me-not? Chasing after you, is she?”
Was it jealousy colored Val’s voice as he jerked his line from the water, and cast it impatiently to a new spot?
“She was there with a child,” he said, casting truth at Val, hoping he might catch more of it, if he were patient.
“Child? What child?”
“I cannot claim to be entirely clear on that point. A Foster, in the care of your Miss Foster.”
“Not my Miss Foster at all any more, my friend,” Val protested. “ Your Miss Foster it would seem. As to the child, “ His lips pursed, his voice dripped with even more sarcasm than usual. “A by-blow, most likely. Does he favor Touch-me-not?”
“She is fair, with blue eyes.”
Val shook the fair hair from his own blue eyes. “And how old did she appear to be?”
Alexander shrugged, though he was not at all casual in studying Val’s hands gripping the pole, his knuckles gone white. “Difficult to tell. I do not consider myself a good judge when it comes to children, but she does not look to be more than five, or so.”
Val had any response in mind it was cut short by the salmon that in that instant struck hard the end of his line, but Alexander wondered many times afterward, if it was the bite of the fish, or the news he had just received knocked Valentine Wharton unsteadier in that instant.
Penny saw him in crossing the bridge over the River Eden, he and his friends walking toward her, fishing creels slung across their shoulders, rods piercing the ground hugging clouds. Fine figured young men, all three of them, and yet at sight of them her attention fixed exclusively on Alexander Shelbourne, on the dark gleam of his hair, the strength of shoulder and thigh, the narrowness of waist and hip. She awaited his reaction to sight of her with pent breath.
He was speaking to Oscar Hervey, head bent, shoulders shaken by laughter as Oscar’s hands gestured. Oscar spotted her first, and stopped talking, the dark head rose, the hollows of his cheeks, the depths of his eyes turned first to Oscar, and then, sensing her approach, towards her. And suddenly, she could breathe again, deep, happy breaths, for his first reaction was to smile, a broad, face brightening smile, as if it were the most natural thing in the world--as if he could not have stopped himself from smiling had he tried.
Cupid, her Cupid, raised his pole in salute, and quickened his pace.
Valentine Wharton did not.
Oscar simply eyed her with keen interest, gaze straying now and again to regard his companions.
“If it isn’t the Misses Foster,” Shelbourne called out jovially.
“Cupid!” Felicity squealed, and slipping Penny’s hold, ran toward him. “We have been to market,” she said.
“Have you?” He knelt to speak to her on her own level. “We have been fishing.”
“Catch anything?” she asked, leaning into his bent knee.
“Look and see.” As Penny came lee with them, his gaze rose to meet hers. Felicity lifted the creel lid with a gasp.
“Trout!” she cried. “And salmon. Three big ones.”
“Luck, Mr. Shelbourne?” Penny asked, self-conscious under the eyes of so many. As glad as she was to see him, she meant to keep the encounter short--safer that way--smarter--and easier on her nerves.
“Indeed,” he agreed, gazing at her over Felicity’s fair head with a twinkle in his eyes meant just for her, that made her wonder if their encounter figured into that luck somehow.
Then Val was upon them, nothing lucky in the chill gaze he fixed on either of them. “So you’ve a child, have you, Penny, since last we met?”
Lady Anne, Lady Anne , she thought. She must not let him rattle her with his bitter suggestiveness, not with his friends,
Kailin Gow
Amélie S. Duncan
Gabriel Schirm
Eleanor Jones
Alexandra Richland
Matt Blackstone
Kojo Black
Kathryn Gilmore
Kasey Michaels
Jess Raven, Paula Black