Folly's Reward by Jean R. Ewing

Author:Jean R. Ewing [Ewing, Jean R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1997-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The next day as The White Lady came into Oxford, Hal’s growing suspicion became a certainty. He knew this country. He had lived here.

Shipton-on-Cherwell, Kidlington, Wolvercote, the names resounded in his head like a tocsin. Past that rolling swell lay the Evenlode. Over there ran the River Ray. All the bright waters bubbling between their green banks to swell the upper reaches of that great flow of water known as the Thames.

Hal had ridden by these banks and galloped a blood horse through these villages. He knew the interiors of the inns, and the bawdyhouses, and the great houses of the local gentry. He had hunted here and fished, for both game and women.

Oxford, with its multitude of graceful, honey-colored spires had been his home.

Yet the images were blurred around the edges, as if he had pursued all these activities three sheets to the wind. The strain of trying to remember gave him a blinding headache.

It didn’t help that this was the end of his journey with Prudence and Bobby. What possible excuse could he make to stay with them any longer? Prudence would send a message to her sister in Wiltshire, whose carriage would come to fetch them. Hal had done as he had promised, and delivered them both safely out of Scotland.

After this, the wicked marquess, his one-eyed servant, and their small quarry and his governess, were none of his business.

It was a painful and heart-wrenching knowledge.

He closed his eyes for a moment. Dear God, the look on her face when she had finally overcome her fear of the water and begun to float! Those severe features had shone with such vivid pleasure and delight.

She had laughed up at him, her small, cold hand clutching his shoulder. Her pale, silvery hair, escaping from its knot, had floated about them both in the water. She had been free and bold and enchanting, like the Lorelei.

He could still feel the place where her hand had touched him, and the place in his heart that had contracted with longing as she had given him her trust. He had wanted with every fiber of his being to hold her wet face to his and kiss away all of her troubles and her rectitude and her doubt.

So, of course, he had not done so.

Prudence had said with the clear innocence of a child, “Oh, good gracious! Hal, I’m floating! It feels like magic.”

Damnation! If he could only stay with her to bring that brightness back into her face every day! There was so much of the world he wanted to show her.

Had Prudence ever been up in a balloon? Or ridden at a gallop over the downs? Or danced a waltz in the wee hours until she was dizzy?

He wanted to see her face alight with joy and wonder and surprise again. And he wanted, with a desperate and unnerving passion, to see her on fire with that happiness because of him—because he had brought her to ecstasy in his bed.

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