Read Online Night Fire by Catherine Coulter - Free Book Online Page A

anyone could change.”
    â€œYou are taller.”
    â€œYes. I was a bit later than most girls, but I did grow up.”
    He heard something odd in her voice. “Yes, delightfully so,” he said and gave her a warm smile. She didn’t smile back, merely stared up at him, as if he were a ghost.
    Arielle wished now that she hadn’t come to Bunberry Lake today. Strange, how many different things he made her feel. He’d changed; she saw that. Oh, he was still charming and kind to her, but his face was more severe, hardened perhaps, as if he’d seen more than a man should have to see. He still had the marvelous dimples that deepened when he smiled, and the thick brows that flared slightly, giving him a slightly rakish and inquisitive look.
    â€œYou’re home finally,” she managed to say. “It’s been a very long time. How long have you been here?”
    Burke couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was no longer the fifteen-year-old girl, such an open book to him, so completely guileless. This Arielle was nervous and uncertain, perhaps even wary of him. She was also a mystery to him, and she fascinated him. Her body was much the same, he saw. Too slender, he was thinking, but he could see the curve of her high breasts, the narrowness of her waist. No longer the coltish angles of a young girl, but a woman’s slenderness. But it was her face that drew him now, as it had three years before. The purity of her features, the innocence of—He broke off his thinking, realizing that she’d asked him a question and that instead of replying, he was staring at her like a besotted ass. As he had three years before.
    â€œAt Ravensworth Abbey? Only two days. Come and sit down, Arielle.”
    She plucked at her riding skirt, her nervousness, her skittishness, palpable. “I—I don’t know, my lord—”
    â€œThat girl called me Burke. Don’t you remember? Won’t the woman do the same?”
    Of course she remembered. And what did he mean talking of the girl and now the woman? She wanted to leave, quickly. “Very well, Burke. I think I should return to Rendel Hall.”
    â€œNonsense. You are mistress there. If you are late, will the butler order you to your room without your dinner?”
    That made her smile. “Probably not, though he would try to dash me down with one of his looks.” The god’s truth was that the old man always gave her sly, knowing looks.
    He watched her gracefully ease down onto the grass and spread her blue riding skirt about her. She carefully folded her gloved hands in her lap. He ached just looking at her.
    â€œI trust you aren’t wounded this time?”
    He sat beside her and was surprised when she pulled away to place more distance between them. “Yes, but nothing much, really. A saber thrust in my side.”
    She grimaced. “I’m sorry. Have you much pain this time?”
    â€œNot now.”
    â€œWill you remain in England?”
    â€œYes, since Napoleon is out of the way. It is time I did earllike things and earned my title and my keep.”
    â€œSurely there is more than enough to occupy you.”
    I don’t wish to speak of this nonsense, he thought. He was frustrated. He wanted to tell her he wanted her to marry him. Now, today.
    So, instead, he said, “Do you remember what you told me three years ago, Arielle?”
    She cocked her head to one side and stared at him as she sorted through her memories. It was there, of course, there with the feelings she’d felt then, the feelings she’d had after he’d left. She’d told him that she would be waiting for him with all the other ladies. Oh, no, she thought. She began shaking her head. “Why?” she asked.
    He chuckled, trying to mask his tension. “You have become a fickle woman, I see.”
    She had to change the course of this—she had to. “Is your wife at Ravensworth? What is her name?