Like No Other Lover by Julie Anne Long

Author:Julie Anne Long [Long, Julie Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The next day four of them set out to visit the Gypsies. Goodkind shuddered at the idea of having his fortune read, Lady Windermere and Lady Middlebough had gone to visit a Sussex neighbor, and Lord Milthorpe had gone to see another neighbor about a horse he wished to buy.

And Miles Redmond and Lady Georgina stayed behind as well.

Jonathan wagged his eyebrows. “I b’lieve Miles will be leg-shackled ere long.”

No one took up this comment. Violet gave a little grunt, as last night’s sherry had not been kind to her, and Argosy slid Cynthia a look full of mysterious portent.

Cynthia was boarded into the carriage in the morning, quiet and desolate and utterly absorbed, and doing her best to disguise it, because Argosy was clearly full of admiration for her and enthusiasm for their escapade.

Pennyroyal Green in daylight was charming: the pub named for a farm animal and a weed and the little stone church sat across from each other, as though cheerfully resigned to the fact they shared the same customers. Two enormous trees grew closely together at the very center of the village, and off in the distance, up on a hill, a stately building rose: Miss Endicott’s Academy for Young Ladies, not too secretly referred to as the “School for Recalcitrant Girls” by the townspeople. A swath of brilliant, fragile red poppies lead up to it.

“We should have put Violet there many years ago,” Jonathan told Cynthia.

“I should have organized a mutiny,” Violet said easily. “It would not have been sensible to put me there.”

“Doubtless you are right,” Jonathan agreed, yawning. He’d been awake very, very late over billiards with Milthorpe and Argosy, and he’d had rather more to drink than his sister or Cynthia.

Violet, pale from far too many glasses of sherry during last night’s drinking game, had only cast her accounts once, she’d confided proudly to Cynthia. Cynthia’s head felt a little woolly, but she was quite accustomed to fast living and had been equal to the sherry. She was subdued for an entirely different reason.

“Well, I’m certain I’ll learn from the Gypsies that I shall take a long ocean journey and meet a tall, dark stranger,” Violet said.

Jonathan laughed. “I only wish you’d take a long ocean journey.”

She gave him a little kick.

“Children,” Cynthia said.

Still, it fascinated her, and sometimes taunted her to the point of restlessness: this easiness, this playfulness, this taken-for-granted affection and history and money. She wanted it. She wanted it for her children.

She wanted children. She wanted a family.

Argosy smiled at her warmly. His thigh was but three inches from hers.

She saw her own thighs in an entirely different light now, since she’d had them wide open and dangerously wrapped with Miles Redmond’s last night. Her hands curled tightly into her dress to steady herself as the memory washed through her body and made her weak with want.

“Miles took a long ocean journey. But he returned,” Jonathan said.

“Miles will always return,” Violet said contentedly. “No matter what he does. He’s quite reliable.

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