Sweet Savage Eden by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online

problem, I would help!”
    Help! Ah, too late! She could not bear to see him again. Not now, not ever.
    She kept running. Running, heedless of ice and snow and wetness and cold until she reached the kitchen entrance of Master John’s. Cook, by the fire, let her in, pressing a finger to her lips. Jassy gave her a grateful nod and went tearing up the servants’ stairway.
    She quickly went through the attic door and saw that Tamsyn was back in the room, by her mother’s bed.
    “I’ve got it, Tamsyn. Money. Please, will you get the quinine for me? I feel I must stay by her side.”
    “Jassy—”
    Molly caught her arm. She shrugged off her friend’s touch. Tamsyn stood quickly and caught her. “Jassy, lass. Your mum’s at peace now.” “Peace?”
    She stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then his words began to sink in to her mind, and she shook her head in fierce denial.
    “No.
No!
You must get the quinine, Tamsyn! Surely she just sleeps!”
    Neither Tamsyn nor Molly could stop her. She fell to her knees at her mother’s side, grasping the frail white hand. A hand as cold as the blustering wind outside. Stiff, lifeless.
    “Oh, no! Oh, God, please, no!” She screamed out her anguish, then she cried, and she tried to kiss her mother, to warm her with her body. She stared down at her beautiful face and saw that indeed the Master Johns of the world could touch her mother no more. Linnet was gone.
    Jassy laid her head upon the bunk and sobbed.
    Molly came to her and took her in her arms. And still Jassy sobbed, on and on, until there were no more tears to cry.
    “ ’Tis all right, luv, ’tis all right,” Molly said, soothingly.
    And at last Jassy looked at her, eyes glazed but wildly determined.
    “Molly! I shall not live like this, and so help me—I shall not die like this!”
    “There, there,” Molly said with a soft sigh of resignation.
    And Jassy discovered that after all, her tears were not all spent. Because she caught her mother’s cold, delicate hand once again and warmed it with a new flood of sobbing.

III    

    “I shall be going back,” Jamie Cameron said to Robert. “And you should be coming with me.”
    The stableboy had saddled his horse, a bay stallion called Windwalker, but Jamie felt compelled to check the girth himself.
    “I don’t know,” Robert said doubtfully, watching Jamie as he mounted the prancing stallion at last. They were both dressed elegantly for their travel, for by nightfall they would reach Jamie Cameron’s family home, Castle Carlyle, near Somerfield. Jamie was to meet with his father on business, and he was dressed today as his noble sire would wish him to, in a fine white shirt with Flemish lace at the collar and cuffs, slashed leather doublet, soft brocade breeches, a fur-lined cloak, high black leather riding boots, and a wide-brimmed, plumed hat. He was the perfect cavalier. Robert thought with a mild trace of bitterness that his friend could deck himself in any apparel and still appear negligent of it all, masculine and rugged.
    Though Jamie was not his father’s heir, but rather a third son, he admired his father greatly, and they were business partners, both greatly enthusiastic about their joint venture.
    “I’m starting to think that you are mad!” Robert said.
    “Oh? And why is that?”
    “Well, Jamie Cameron, perhaps you will not be the next Duke of Carlyle. But nevertheless, were you not the son of an extremely wealthy and powerful noble, you have used your own trust funds well. You have fought on the seas, and you have met with the savages in Virginia. Any one of them might well have skewered you through. And for what? A company that much more often fails than prospers, and a plot of land given you directly by the king. When you’ve so many acres here in England that I find it doubtful any of your family has ever ridden over them all!”
    Jamie laughed and stared westward, almost as if he could see the New World, where it seemed his heart so often