Surrender the Wind by RITA GERLACH Read Free Book Online

Yes, the house would be dark and bleak, and he dreaded it.
    These troubling visions made him frown, and he cursed his obligation as Benjamin's heir to a house he had never seen, in a country he had not been born to. During his journey over sea and land, he had come to realize that other magnets drew him to England. Those eyes, the parted mouth, drew him to a woman he had not met in the flesh, but in paint and canvas in a candlelit room. The lips, even now in his memory, whispered. The eyes cast a suggestion; the face enticed.
    Seth rebuked his foolishness to dwell on an image, an interpretation of an artist's brush. For all he knew Juleah Fallowes was not as her portrait. What did he care? Outward beauty was fleeting. What mattered lay inward.
    Four miles east of Penzance, the coach rolled over the sandy highway situated atop the hills above Marazion. Below, Seth saw the spire of the Church of Saint Hilary jutting skyward. The coach wheels drowned out the sigh of wind. The tide had gone out in Mount's Bay, and from the highest point on land, Seth gazed at the granite island of St. Michael's Mount rising out of the sea. The sun spread a plane of sapphire across the water, alighted lances against the rocks and the ancient castle atop the island. What kind of person would live in such a place? It would be lonely, and to be surrounded by the sea,depressing. He preferred fields of wheat and corn, deep forests, the whisper of the Potomac. In a castle surrounded by rock and water, a man would go mad, or fat and idle. He’d have no fields to plow; life would be dull and listless, absent of singing birds, replaced by screeching gulls, no great bass to fish from the river, no deer to hunt.
    Soon the island passed out of view. The coach swayed and dipped along a road lined with villages and headed inland to cross the barren heathlands of Bodmin Moor on to northern Devonshire.
    At nightfall, the coach slowed, came to a halt in front of an inn outside of Baxworthy. The sign outside the black lacquered door read The Black Mare, and it swayed with the breeze upon rusty hinges.
    The coachman jumped down from his perch, and a moment later a woman ordered him to go easy with her baggage. Under the glare of the coach lamps, he opened the door, pulled down the step, and handed the lady up, followed by a boy and his sister. The woman wore a large bonnet clustered with blue ribbons and a thick bow beneath her chin. She plopped into the seat across from Seth and gathered her children to each side of her.
    “Good eve, sir.” Her breath hurried, and she gathered her cloak closer about her. “My, it is fine weather to travel in, is it not? Chilly, but fine.”
    “Yes, madam,” replied Seth. A snap of the reins and the horses moved off into the center of the road and headed on. The left wheel dipped into a pothole and the coach lurched to the side and soon righted.
    The lady passenger, now Seth's companion for the journey, glanced at him somewhat puzzled. Fidgeting, she wished to break the silence between them.
    “My children and I are not far from home. I shall be happy to sit before my own fire. We have come from my sister's house, Lowery Cottage, just outside of Milford. Are you familiar with Lowery Cottage, sir?”
    Seth lifted his hand from under his chin. “I’m afraid not.”
    “Oh? Well, it is a fine place to be sure. My sister's husband is the vicar there, and the church sits nearby in a pretty glade. May I ask where it is you are journeying to?”
    “I’m on my way to Ten Width.”
    The lady sighed. “Ten Width?”
    “You know this place, ma’am?”
    “Know it? Indeed, sir, I do.”
    “Is it far from here?”
    “Within the hour, I’d say. Did not the coachman say as much?”
    “He said we would arrive in daylight. I see now he was wrong.”
    “That is true. The coach was an hour late picking us up.”
    “I hope your family shall not worry,” Seth said.
    “I am sure my husband is anxious to see us home. Ten Width is