Cynders & Ashe by Elizabeth Boyle Read Free Book Online Page A

marrying a princess, and I have no patience now that I’ve found you again.”
    She shook her head and glanced shyly up into his gaze. “And it doesn’t matter to you who I am?”
    “No. I was destined to find my bride that night, and I did. You wouldn’t have been there that night if we weren’t meant to be together.”
    She laughed, a musical sound that brought back memories for him. “When did you become such a romantic?”
    Now it was his turn to laugh. “When you ran out and left me naught a clue to be found. You could have at the very least left me a slipper.”
    “Or my wings?” she teased back.
    “They might have helped, but I doubt the mothers of London would have appreciated me wandering about trying them on their daughters,” he said, before he leaned closer to her ear, “or asking them if their little girl had a cute bit of freckle on her—”
    She swatted him playfully and danced down the line away from him. Ashe watched her every step and, when they rejoined each other, she said, “I see you haven’t lost a bit of your wickedness.”
    “Do you mind?”
    “Not in the least,” she replied.
    They danced for a few more minutes in silence, just gazing at each other. To Ashe, she was lovelier than he remembered, from the gorgeous mane of red hair down to her slippers. She seemed less fragile than she had those many years earlier.
    “Where have you been?” he asked. “And don’t you dare tell me you got married.”
    “No, nothing like that.” She tipped her head slightly. “I went away. It seemed the sensible solution at the time.”
    “Sensible? Not to me! And what do you mean, away? Away where?”
    “Far away,” she told him. “I thought it best.”
    “Best for who?” he said. “You stole my heart, you minx.” He pulled her close, closer than was necessary for the dance, and whispered in her ear, “Let me guess, you were deserting heartbroken men from one side of the Continent to another.”
    She shook her head, lips twitching with mirth. “No. I haven’t been doing anything like that.”
    “And when did you come back to London?”
    “Six months ago,” she confessed.
    “And why didn’t you come to me?”
    It seemed an eternity before she answered. “I almost did,” she said, a tremble to her voice. “But I didn’t know—”
    He stopped in the middle of the floor. “Know what?”
    “I didn’t know if you would forgive me. Or what that night had meant to you—”
    “Did it mean anything to you?”
    “More than you could know.”
    “Then prove it. Say you will marry me.”
    Then came a loud outburst that drowned out her response. For a red-faced, furious matron at the doorway to the Ashe ballroom stopped the evening cold, as she shouted at the top of her lungs, “That woman is a thief and an imposter!”
    Five
    Ashe stalked back and forth in front of the breakfast table where his mother sat eating her morning repast as if nothing were amiss.
    “I lost her, Mother! Again!” In the chaos of the Lady Fitzsimon’s shouted accusations, his lady love, his fairy queen, had managed to slip through the crowd and get out of the house.
    One of the servants had seen her leaving through the garden.
    Lady Ashe nodded and smiled and buttered her toast without a word.
    “How will I ever find her again? I don’t even know her name.”
    “You looked as if you knew each other quite intimately,” his mother said. It wasn’t so much a scold . . . But really, such a kiss! And in front of the guests. Then again, hadn’t her husband kissed her in much the same manner the night they had fallen in love? But he’d had the decency to steal her off to the conservatory on some ridiculous pretence that the oranges were in bloom.
    “What if Lady Fitzsimon gets to her first?” he said. “She’ll have her thrown in prison.”
    “Lady Fitzsimon will most likely get to her first,” Lady Ashe said.
    That froze her son’s steps. “Mother, that is the last thing we want to