Elisabeth Fairchild by Captian Cupid Read Free Book Online Page B

the little girl said.
    “We shall cup some water from the beck.”
    “I’ve milk,” he suggested.
    “Milk?” Miss Foster stopped so fast he almost ran into her. She turned in her tracks,  gazing at him with frowning skepticism, much like the moment in which he had bent to kiss her. “You have milk?”
    “In the jug in the beck?” the child asked.
    “Yes.”
    Miss Foster’s brows rose.
    “You do not strike me as a milk drinker, sir.”
    “I thought, if I should have the good fortune to encounter you here, that you might like it in your tea.”
    Silence as she absorbed this.
    “Darjeeling or China Black? I’ve a camp kettle to boil water.”
    She frowned, uncertainty clouding her brow, defenses breached.
    “If nothing else, let the child have a drink before you go,” he suggested.
    She sighed, stood ready to succumb. He delivered the coup de gras . “I will press you no more. It matters too much to me that we should remain friends.”
    Her frown became more pronounced. “Were we ever?” she asked frankly.
    “Were we not?” He turned the question back on her.
    She pursed her lips. “I know too little of you to regard you as friend, Mr. Shelbourne. I have only just learned your name.”
    “Oh? I knew from the moment we met we were to be friends.” His lips, gone dry now, remembered the moist, willing potential of her mouth. They had stepped already beyond the limitations of mere friendship. She knew it as well as he, and he was not going to let her run away from that without a struggle. “We’ve no chance of any kind of relationship if you cannot forgive me,” he pointed out.
    She looked at the child. Val’s child?
    The child looked back, her desire for food and drink hovering in a soulful gaze.
    “Forgiveness is a quality worth nurturing,” Penny said. “You must remember that, Felicity.”
    He wanted kiss her  again--for capitulating, for any reason whatsoever, and no reason at all.
    The girl’s face brightened. “Shall I run fetch the jug?”
    “Ask Mr. Shelbourne.”
    He nodded. “Go then.”
    She skipped ahead, Miss Foster watching, love in her eyes.
    “A pretty child,” he said. “She looks like you.”
    “Do you think so?” The brilliance of her gaze dimmed. “I see so much of her father in her.”
    “Do I know him?” he asked carefully.
    She studied him a moment before responding with an enigmatic smile, “I do not think you do.”
    Not Val then. Not the love child he had feared she must be. “He leaves her care to you?” He had to know more, and yet he would step lightly over heavy ground.
    “Entirely.”
    Beyond that, she was not forthcoming.
    “About your kisses, Mr. Shelbourne.” She effectively diverted his attention.
    His brows rose involuntarily. “My kisses, Miss Foster?”
     She blushed, and looked away. “I would not have you think I encourage them.”
    He let the words hang between them a moment, tension building. He watched the pulse beat faster in the vein in her neck. “Not at all,” he said at last. “I understand they discomfited you.”
    “Yes.” She looked up.
    “Such was never my intention.”
    “No. I’m sure you were led to believe I would welcome them.”
    “I was not led at all,” he contradicted. “I simply charged in where I was not yet wanted. Can you forgive me?”
    Her eyes, those remarkable amethyst eyes, fixed on him in a manner most provocative, though he was certain that was not at all her intention.
    “This time,” she said.
    He found himself distracted by her mouth--the mouth that he must kiss again, and soon, for she implied there would be another time.
    “I trust that I shall never need to forgive you again?” she said.
    He nodded, bowed, and vowed to himself that the next time he kissed her, forgiveness would prove entirely unnecessary.

Chapter Seven

    They chose a patch of sunshine, sheltered from wind, with a view of the lake. The force made a distant hushing noise, the lapping of the lake overriding it. He built a