Seize the Fire by Laura Kinsale Read Free Book Online Page A

himself on her uncle's hanging list. Instead he said bracingly, "Good girl. Now—we must make some plans. I'll take care of the traveling arrangements beyond London, of course, but as far as this end—I'm afraid I haven't been here long enough to learn the coaching schedule, far less know of a clever way to spirit you off."
    She took a deep, shaky breath. "I'd thought of walking to Upwell and asking Fish Stovall to take me on the river in his punt to King's Lynn."
    "An excellent notion. But can this Fish Stovall be trusted not to talk?"
    "Fish is a very, very good friend of mine," she said seriously. "I would trust him with my life."
    Sheridan made no comment on the wisdom of trusting one's life to a man named Fish. "And—uh—forgive me; I don't wish to pry. But have you considered the"—he cleared his throat, looking pointedly away—"ah, finances?"
    "Oh, of course!" She put down the teacup and fumbled at the diamond, searching for the clasp. "You must take this. I hadn't wanted to seem forward and press it upon you without knowing you truly wished to help me. Can you sell it? And I'll bring the rest of my personal jewelry along to provide for us on the way. This is only one of the smaller pieces."
    The gold chain and setting flowed into Sheridan's palm. He glanced down at it, turned it over once and managed not to break into ecstatic smiles. He closed his fingers over the stone. "Princess," he said softly, taking her hand and pressing it against his fist, as if he could not bring himself to let her part with the jewel. "Are you quite sure?"
    She bit her lip, hesitating, and for one awful moment he thought he had gone too far. Then she looked up and nodded.
    He lifted her hand to his lips. "You are a brave and gallant lady."
    He expected to melt her to a puddle with that. But instead of going pliable and moony, she straightened her back and set her jaw, staring into his eyes with a little shake of her head. "No," she said in a small, gruff voice. "Not yet. Don't say so yet."
    He held her hand a second longer. Her fingers, enveloped in his, had a faint, rhythmic tremble. It might have been merely the cold. But her skin had gone dead white, her eyes were wide and her lower lip was not quite steady. It was a look that Sheridan knew. He'd seen it on the fixed faces of untried midshipmen watching their ship closing in to a first encounter, and on the dead-pale countenance of a man seized up for flogging. He'd recognized it in his own mirror and felt it freeze his own face times without number.
    He let go of her. She sat still for a moment, gazing into space, seeing God-knew-what nightmares in store for her. Then at last her face came alive again and she looked up at him…and now there was adoration in her eyes, worship for the hero he was not and never had been.
    He'd seen that before, too—as often as not on the faces of those same poor, fatuous midshipmen who thought he was going to carry them to glory, when all it would be was guns and noise and mangled limbs and hot-cold terror. It made him faintly sick, meeting that look here, on a female face—on her face, round and solemn—as if a sparrow expected to be a hawk and thought he could make her one.
    He could not. And he would not have if he could.
    With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the diamond into her lap. "Take it back," he said quietly.
    Olympia looked down at it and up, bewildered. Sir Sheridan's expression had gone flat and uninterpretable, his mouth a straight line and his gray eyes shifting away from hers. He stood, leaving the blankets in a tumble on the couch.
    "Take it back," he repeated. "Go home. I'm a bad egg, you know. Liar and a knave. I'll cheat you when I'm able, and leave you hanging when I'm not."
    "Pardon me?" she said.
    "You think I'm an honorable man. It so happens you're wrong." He slanted a strange smile in her direction, a tight upward curve of one comer of his mouth. "But you'd best keep the secret to yourself. I'd rather it wasn't spread