Read Online Elisabeth Fairchild by Captian Cupid - Free Book Online Page A

not with Cupid watching so intently. Not with Felicity staring up at them. “A child in my care, yes, Val. A lot has happened since you went away.”
    The man that had once won her with a lad’s wink regarded her as coldly as if they were complete strangers.
    “Whose is she?” he asked bluntly.
    She could have slapped him. Felicity’s attention was by now firmly fixed on the two of them, her keen little ears taking in every word, her body tense with listening.
    “She is mine, now. Aren’t you Felicity, my love?” She took the child’s hand, her gaze meeting briefly that of Mr. Shelbourne as he rose, lacing his creel lid shut.
     “Little pitchers have big ears, Val,” he curtailed Val’s response in asking,  “Can these questions keep? Fish are spoiling.”

    Penny was spared further questions, further contact of any kind with Val and his guests, until the evening of Fiona’s fete.
    Spring hung in the breeze, despite the chill, a hint of crushed hyacinths and snow drops. The carriages had intruded upon the corner of the garden. Penny and her father, disembarking from her father’s ancient coach, were met by the creaking sway of the apple trees Appleby was famous for.
    “What an awful noise,” her father complained, and Penny could not tell if it was the moaning treetops he referred to, or the scrape of fiddles and the keenness of a pipe trailing from the wide doors of the barn.
    They paused to peep in the doorway to the vast, stone floored apple storage area. It smelled most pleasantly of the ghost of that ripe fruit, but now, in a flurry of color and movement, it was a Circassian Circle of apple-cheeked young men and women. The younger and more energetic of the guests danced themselves warm, eyes bright, laughter on their lips.
    She glanced about, wondering if he would be there. Hoping.
    Her father was greeted by nods.
    She did not see him. No Cupid. No Val. No Oscar.
    Penny drew her cloak closer against the nip of the wind, against the heated looks from the young men. She ignored them, as the young women ignored her, pretending her invisible. It never failed to pain her, and yet she expected no more of them. It did not matter, not in the grand scheme of things. Her mother had let things matter too much. Not she. She modeled herself after Lady Anne. She arranged her features in an expression of sublime indifference.
    Her father seemed not to notice. She often wondered if her own face took on such a rigid, impassive expression.
    “Will you dance, Penny?” One of the Griffith lads asked, eyes bright with hope, the only man in the room gentlemanly enough to ask, and he five years her junior, filled with the confidence of youth.
    Was she forbidden fruit to be tasted? Or was it pity she read in his eyes? She considered refusing him. Uncertainty hung uneasy in his lips, his gaze. His eyes spoke of his preparation for refusal--rejection. She saw herself in that look, and took pity.
    “Yes,” she said. “I am fond of dancing. But it must be later, if you do not mind. I would greet the host and hostess of tonight’s affair.”
    He went back to his friends, young lads dressed to the nines. They clustered in a corner, and whispered word of her answer with hearty claps upon Griffith’s back, and shoulder.
    He smiled,  and said nothing. Not one to gloat, not in front of her. She was glad of that.
    Let them dream, she thought. Let them imagine her worse than she was, ready to debauch young lads, prepared to sate their wildest desires, the second snake seduced Eve of Appleby. None of it was true. She was myth to them, rumor and innuendo. It did not matter. She had promised herself she would dance before the evening was out, and enjoy herself doing so. Small matter that the dancer was not to be the one she had imagined.
    She and her father stepped out of the warmth and noise, into the night, chill and dark. They crossed the tidy farmyard to the house, every window aglow with light, the chimney spouting a plume of