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

about, and no one would believe you anyway."
    She tilted her head. For a shocked moment, she'd thought he meant what he said, but that peculiar smile enlightened her. "I understand," she said, with a nervous curve of her own lips. "You're joking again."
    The odd touch of humor faded from his face. He watched her without speaking. His hair was very black against the golden light, curling a little below his ear and at his neck. She felt a queer regret that she would never again see him like this. She wanted to memorize him, to put him in a book to take out and treasure in secret midnight moments—to survey at her leisure the shape of shoulder and chest, to imagine the texture of his skin, sun-touched and shadowed.
    But those were thoughts for hidden places, thoughts to ponder in the safety of her own bed in the night. She lowered her lashes to hide them from him. When still he did not speak, she gathered the gold chain and pendant and laid it next to his teacup. Collecting her redingote, she stood up from the couch.
    "I should go now."
    He made no move to help her with her coat. She struggled into it by herself and looked up from buttoning.
    "When you wish to contact me," she said, "leave a message with Fish at Upwell. I see him every day."
    His brush of black lashes lowered. He stared at the teacup and the diamond that lay next to it. She could make nothing of his expression, and yet she was disturbed by it. She wet her lips and picked up her hat, rolling the brim in her fists. "I cannot—Sir Sheridan…you must know there are no words to thank you."
    He looked up at her, a quick flash of gray, intensely cool in the warm light of window and coal fire. "Not yet," he said, with a lift of his brows and a ghost of that disturbing smile. "Take a page from your own book, Princess. Don't thank me yet."
    The imperturbable Mrs. Plumb spread out a bolt of silver satin on the bed in Olympia's room and stood looking down at it with one of those sideways tilts of her chin which emphasized her elegant cheekbones.
    "What do you think?" she asked. She was an extraordinarily handsome governess, with a statuesque figure, a tiny waist and an unerring fashion sense where Olympia's wardrobe was concerned, although Mrs. Julia Plumb herself was never seen in anything but the most modest of widow's weeds. "I believe it would make up into a lovely walking dress."
    Mr. Stubbins wrote poetry about her. Mrs. Plumb laughed at it, and asked why a fellow barely out of leading strings should waste his time playing the flirt with an old woman—although Olympia thought secretly that Julia seemed to like it well enough. It had made Olympia wildly jealous years ago, when Mr. Stubbins' soft golden curls and brown eyes, aflame with revolutionary fervor, had been the focus of her sixteen-year-old dreams.
    By now, at twenty-four, she'd long outgrown that infatuation. It was nothing but childish aristocratic vanity to care for such things. She poked unenthusiastically at the silver satin. "It seems overly pretentious to me," she said. "I prefer muslin."
    Mrs. Plumb ignored that, except for a little sniff. It gave her a certain status, Olympia supposed, to have a position in the household of a princess, no matter how unexalted. Olympia and Mr. Stubbins deplored such conservative and ignorant sentiments, but neither of them had the nerve to face down that chill and beautiful gaze by stating their opinions out loud.
    "The seamstress has the fashion illustrations I thought would suit you best," Julia said. "There are several that will compliment an excessively full figure very well, I think." She looked up from the bolt of satin, her fine blue eyes regarding Olympia with an opaque expression. "You took a lengthy walk this morning, for such a cold day."
    After the smallest of hesitations, Olympia turned toward the window and said, "I left a card on Captain Drake."
    She was annoyed to hear the words come out with a trace of defiance.
    "Indeed," Julia said mildly. "That