Empire by Edward Cline Read Free Book Online Page A

now, neither you nor Jack has pressed me for one, although,” she added with a brief smile, “my parents are perhaps as anxious as are you.”
    Hugh frowned. “Are you afraid to make a decision?”
    Etáin shook her head. “I will not be, when I have found an answer.” She studied him again. “Is it because you fear my answer, that you are anxious?”
    “Yes, I own that it is that. It is, I think, the only thing I fear.”
    “Dear Hugh,” said the girl, “you will not lose me, whatever decision I make. You must remember that as your rival is not a Boeotian, I am not a…sister of your Reverdy.”
    Hugh grinned in concession. He was pleased that she remembered their first conversation years ago, at the celebration ball at Enderly. It was then and there that, facing him and Jack Frake, she had first posed theriddle: Which of you is the north, and which is the needle? “I know that about both of you,” he said. “It is always on my mind, as a reproach to my anxiousness.” He paused. “Why can you not decide between us, Etáin?”
    Etáin put down her cup and saucer. “Because you are so much alike in everything I think is admirable in a man, yet so different in your approaches to things. You are like twins. Together, you and Jack are my Gemini.” She stopped, and then said, “But, there is a…flaw in one of you that I have not been able to ken, because I do not think it has manifested itself.”
    “A flaw?” mused Hugh. “I cannot imagine what that might be…in Jack. As for myself…well, I am as mortal as he. One of us is the north, and one the needle. Am I Castor, or Pollux? But,” he sighed, “I am happy that we comprise your Gemini. It is no small honor you pay us, and some consolation to me, at least.”
    Etáin said, “Jack asked me those same questions, Hugh. And I gave him the same answers.”
    “It would be like him to ask them,” remarked Hugh. “How can you know that a flaw exists in one of us, if you cannot identify it?”
    “Because you both have done something, or said something, that seems to tell a distinction between you. I am not even certain that it is a flaw. And I have been unable to identify what it is.”
    Hugh sighed again. “Well, until you do, I suppose we shall conform to the story of the Gemini, and Jack and I consider you as our sister, Helen. There, however, the analogy of our Olympian myth grows skewed. There is no Paris to steal you away, and Caxton is no Troy.”
    He saw the fondness in Etáin’s eyes dissolve to love. “That is one of your sadder virtues, Hugh,” she said. She rose then, came to him, and bent to brush a hand lightly over his face. “I still have the penny you gave me at the ball. It will never be spent.”
    It was the first intimate evidence of her feeling for him. Hugh closed his eyes at the touch of her cool fingers and palm. He allowed himself to raise a hand, and pressed it against her unseen waist.
    Etáin lingered for an immeasurable second, then stepped away. “I must go back to the shop.”
    Hugh looked up at her with loving gratitude. “Yes. You must.” He glanced down at the tea service. “Thank you…for remembering our first encounter,” he whispered.
    “Thank you…for it,” whispered the girl in turn. With a rustle of herskirts, she turned sharply and left the parlor.
    Hugh followed her back into the shop a moment later. He exchanged a few words with Madeline McRae, and then left. He mounted his horse and walked it leisurely back to Meum Hall, somehow happy about his short time with Etáin, but only just then wondering what she had meant by his “sadder virtues.”
    * * *
    Ian McRae returned to the shop near dusk. His wife and daughter both noted that he looked unusually dour. He said little, except to inform them that he had arranged to have his modest cargo — plows, hammers, nails, pewter dishes, tinware, kettles, muskets, and sundry household necessities, all specially ordered by his customers — drayed up to the