Fortune Favors the Wicked by Theresa Romain

Author:Theresa Romain
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-02-08T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Even when it slowed to a drought-starved trickle, Charlotte always paused to listen for the Kinder Downfall before she saw it. At this point in late spring, warm and rainy and muddy, it had grown to a great rush of water.

Charlotte approached it from the base, where the water poured into cracked and fallen stones. Benedict planted his cane and tilted his head. “At first I thought it was a great wind, only because the truth seemed impossible. How did you arrange a waterfall in flat moorland?”

Charlotte laughed. “How dearly I would love to take the credit for everything that impresses you. But I did not make the Kinder Downfall—and in fact, it isn’t flat here at all. Shall I tell you about it, or would you rather find your way around?”

“Each in turn.” He had tucked his cane beneath his arm, finding it of little use on the spongy, yielding ground outside the village. Any more rain, Charlotte knew, and they’d have been ankle-deep in muddy moors, but for now the ground held its place.

Here, though, there was rock underfoot. Broken at first, a piece here and there, and then in larger and larger slabs. Benedict was scaling one of them now, hat and cane laid aside on one of the patches of misted grass. Clearly impatient with his too-short coat, he tossed it to join the cane, felt his way up the side of a cracked block.

“Come sit by me, Charlotte,” he called down the yards separating them, “and tell me everything you see.”

She untied the strings of her bonnet, flung it atop his borrowed coat, and clambered up after him.

“I like all of this stone. This is a more solid place to find one’s way about than any other in Strawfield,” he said as she tucked herself in place beside him on the gray slab of rock.

“I’ve always thought so.” She squinted into the distance. “If I could have lived here instead of at the vicarage, I’d have been a happy child. At least until a mealtime or two trailed past and I grew hungry.”

For a moment they sat together, warm under an endless sky.

“Tell me about this waterfall,” Benedict then said. “I feel the spray in flecks on my skin, so I know it’s not a huge fall. It tumbles slowly, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, though more quickly with every rain. Over time it has washed away the earth and found the stone beneath and cracked it. The stone is gray, like . . . like an elephant’s back.”

“I have never seen an elephant’s back,” Benedict said wryly. “But the color gray I am familiar with.”

“This is my thanks for trying to be poetic and descriptive. Next time I shall describe for you only in the plainest, barest terms.”

His fingers found hers, just a touch of warm fingertips atop cold stone. “Describe for me however you like. I want to see it as you do.”

“No one ought to see the world as I do. You know what I’ve done, what I’ve been.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.