Harlequin Historical August 2020--Box Set 1 of 2 by Michelle Willingham

Author:Michelle Willingham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sara was about halfway through the story when the factory noise suddenly intruded, alerting her to a new arrival. Quickly closing the door behind him, Cameron Fitzallen smiled at her. ‘Don’t let me interrupt, Miss Standish. Please, continue reading.’

Able this time, since he wasn’t driving or walking beside her, to observe the force of that smile full-on, for a moment, Sara simply stared at him. The wavy dark hair she’d love to brush back off his forehead, the dark eyes glowing with an energy and intelligence that seemed to speak to her…the firm, full lips she had too many times imagined pressed against her own. He radiated such a sense of command, an air that said this was a man who knew where he intended to go and would certainly get there.

‘Oh, yes, miss, you must go on!’ Alice said, jolting Sara from her rapt contemplation. ‘What happens next? Does the sorceress find the Prince talking up to Rapunzel?’

‘Yes, you must let us know,’ Fitzallen said, giving her a little wink as he walked over to seat his tall, rangy form on the edge of the study table. Feeling her cheeks heat at having been caught staring at him, Sara looked back down at the book.

‘’Course she has to catch him,’ Andrew said. ‘If she didn’t, there wouldn’t be no story.’

‘You are correct, Andrew,’ Sara replied. ‘A story isn’t very interesting unless the characters have to struggle to win their happy ending. But before he is discovered, he convinces the maiden to let down her hair and let him climb up to the tower…’

Sara continued to read, stopping from time to time to ask the students to guess what might happen next and, towards the end, pausing to let them chant the refrain, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair’, which they did loudly and with gusto.

As she made her way through the story, changing her voice as she read in turn the part of the maiden, the Prince and the sorceress, she noticed that, though he didn’t look at her directly, Thomas was tapping his finger on the desk, quite obviously listening.

Not even someone opposed to school can resist a story, she thought.

At last, after sighing when the maiden was cast out of the tower and the Prince was blinded, the children cheered and clapped when the two were reunited, the maiden’s tears healing the Prince’s damaged eyes.

‘And, of course,’ Sara concluded, ‘they went off to his kingdom and lived together happily ever after.’

‘That was wonderful!’ Jenny said. ‘Please, Mr Sellers, can she read another story?’

‘I mustn’t today—you have lessons to finish. But if Mr Sellers allows, I will come back and read another day.’

‘Please, say she can come back,’ Alice begged.

‘What a skilled reader you are, Miss Standish,’ Sellers said. ‘I would be as delighted as my students to listen to you again, whenever and as often as you find it convenient.’

‘I would enjoy that. But now, I should go and let you get to your work! Thank you, children, for letting me visit today, and thank you, Mr Sellers, for lending me your classroom.

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