Dangerous Dalliance by Joan Smith

Author:Joan Smith [Smith, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1992-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

Alone in the cloud

Too fierce and too proud

To open my mad heart.

No love avowed.

Joy found me.

I stood a moment, staring at it. Was it a coded message? Or was it what it seemed, a love offering to his lady with the gray eyes? Whatever it was, I had to get it back into the book before Snoad realized I had seen it. While the men were busy at one of the nests, I quickly returned and slid the paper back into the book. Then I walked nonchalantly along and joined them.

“Where are the males while the females are hatching the eggs?” Fairfield asked.

“They’re about the loft,” Snoad replied. I remembered him telling me that it was the males who sat on the eggs during the day. Why did he not tell Fairfield? And even more interesting, why did Fairfield not know it, if he was a breeder as he claimed to be?

A little later, Fairfield expressed some surprise that so many of the nests held two eggs. Two glossy white eggs were the standard. Really, the man was even more ignorant about the whole business than I was.

“All of this is old hat to Miss Hume,” Snoad said. “Do not let us keep you, ma’am, if you have other business to attend to.”

I had no intention of letting him run me off, and said, “It is Caesar and Cleo that Lord Fairfield is particularly interested in. Where are they? I have not seen them any of the times I have been up here recently.”

“Cleo is in the tree, waiting for Caesar to return,” he said. I looked, and saw a bird that might have been Cleo sitting in the tree. She was almost all white, with a splash of burgundy on her chest. Her maternal grandmother was a passenger pigeon from America. Pelletier had introduced the strain into his roost for their superior size. The fleshy protuberance at the base of her beak—Papa called it a cere—was also distinctive. It was darker than most, almost black. That she dared to sit in that tree was proof enough that she was indeed Caesar’s mate. No other birds dared to touch it. Caesar had a sharp temper.

Yet the other day, he had told me Cleo was nesting. He had said Caesar was with her. “Where is Caesar?” I asked.

“He got bored, and is out for a flight,” Snoad replied. “While you are here, ma’am, there is something I would like to discuss with you. Now that your father is not here, I really need a helper. The birds being trained must be taken some miles from the loft and released on a regular basis, so they will learn to fly home. I shall need someone in the loft while I take the birds away, or someone to take them while I remain here.”

“I’d be happy to do it,” Lord Fairfield said.

“But you will only be here a few days, milord,” Snoad pointed out.

“If you’ll cage the birds, I’ll have the groom take them out,” I told Snoad.

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