Season of Light by Katharine McMahon Read Free Book Online Page A

‘I’ll be on my way, then. Give my kindest regards to your sister, Miss Ardleigh.’
    If she didn’t say another word he would be forced to leave immediately. Sure enough he sighed, bowed and with only one backward glance, was gone.
    In a flash Asa was up the stairs, had seized her cloak and bonnet and glanced in the mirror. She noticed that her cheeks were pink and her eyes burning. But as she crossed the Cherche-Midi, weaving between a couple of wagons, it occurred to her to look back – she thought she’d seen a man wearing a grey coat standing at the street corner as she emerged from the hotel. Yes, it was Shackleford, who had now clapped on his hat and was striding away. Surely he hadn’t caught sight of her. A horse obscured her vision and when she looked again he was gone.
    She was nearly a quarter of an hour late. Didier was waiting for her at the street door and dashed forward to meet her, holding up his hand as if her excuses were an irrelevance. Again they climbed the stairs in silence, but this time, when they reached the middle landing, he took her hand and did not let go until they reached the apartment, where he again poured coffee from the leaf-patterned jug and sat a little closer, so that her knees were actually enclosed by his as they drank.
    ‘What have you been doing, Mademoiselle Ardleigh, since I last saw you?’
    ‘Very little. I am late because, just as I was leaving, my cousin Mr Shackleford came to call.’
    ‘Ah yes. I know him.’
    ‘His family wealth comes from slavery. I want nothing to do with him.’
    ‘You are a harsh judge, mademoiselle. Must a man be criticised for what his father has done? I have seen Mr Shackleford time and again in Paris. To his credit he has friends everywhere, among all types of people, and he admires you very much.’
    ‘When my father dies,’ said Asa, ‘Shackleford’s older brother will inherit Ardleigh. You see, our English laws are as unjust as the French. Because the property is entailed through the male line we three girls will have nothing and Georgina and I will be homeless. So not only is Shackleford the son of a slave trader, he will also be a cuckoo in our nest. Can you blame me for turning him down?’
    ‘You turned him down? In what way did you turn him down?’
    His arms were folded and she had to look away from his blue gaze to the plain knot of fabric at his throat. ‘There was … a type of proposal.’
    ‘And would you turn down every other man in Paris?’
    A gardener was clipping the monastery hedge. Asa could imagine the snip of metal through leaf and twig, the smell of the cut leaves. When Didier got up she thought for a moment that he would pick up her cloak; instead he stood behind her chair, brought his mouth close to her ear and let his hand fall softly on her shoulder.
    ‘Had you not come, I would have died,’ he whispered.
    He placed a kiss on the side of her neck over the cloth of her little muslin scarf but immediately afterwards, as if to distance himself from his words and the momentous kiss, he stepped aside. ‘We should leave this room or at least talk of other things.’
    She looked out at the monk in the garden. ‘Yes. We’ll talk. Then I’ll go.’
    ‘And yet you and I have nothing more to say. We understand each other completely, having both drunk from the same cup. You and I, we want the same things.’ As if unable to help himself he drew closer, brushed the back of his fingers against her neck and smoothed her hair from her forehead. The gardener on the other side of the monastery wall made a little heap of cut leaves with the side of his foot. Didier raised her chin with the edge of his thumb. The expression in his eyes melted her bones. His kiss cracked her open.
    Nobody had taught her this. She had not understood, as a witness to the decorous embraces of Philippa and Morton, that a kiss might be this extraordinary exchange of lip and tongue. She stood in his arms, broken by the dark hot place he had