A Heart in Flight Read Free Page A

time later the carriage stopped before 33 Leadenhall Street. In the niche above the door stood the statue of Minerva. With her spear in one hand and her shield in the other, the helmeted goddess stood guard over the Press and Lending Library which bore her name.
    The Earl smiled as he handed her down, that smile that said so much. And made Aurelia feel even more. How strange that he should have such an effect on her. But then, it had been a long winter and she had consumed many, many romances. Probably some of that had colored her perception of him.
    “Thank you for the ride.” She endeavored to speak calmly, but it was difficult. Who would have thought that just being near a man could be so exciting? “I shall be here some time, and then I have other errands to attend to. So you needn’t wait.” That was only fair. They had imposed on the man enough.
    Ranfield nodded. “I shall just escort you inside.”
    She wanted him to do that, but she didn’t want him to know she wanted it. “I ...”
    “There are several books I wish to borrow for myself.”
    So Aurelia took the arm he offered her. A pleasantly warm sensation stole over her at the feel of it under her fingertips. Was this the sensation Lady Incognita’s heroines described?
    She much wanted to leave her hand there, to feel so pleasant for a little longer. But she did have some sense of propriety. Papa had not wasted all the money he spent on Miss Rutherford.
    So, immediately after they were inside the door, she removed her hand, saying formally, “Good day, milord. And thank you again.”
    “Good day, Miss Amesley.”
    For a brief moment she experienced disappointment that he had not continued their conversation. The feeling was almost as bad as when they had called off that ascension last year.
    Perhaps it was even worse. Her insides were all aboil. And, unaccountably, she wanted to sniffle.
    She turned away, and, conscious of his eyes following her, moved off into the shelves of books.
    It took some moments, once she was out of his sight, to compose herself. She did not, after all, have many days like this one! Imagine meeting a flesh and blood hero. The more she thought about it, the more she felt certain of his “hero-hood.”
    Well, it was a pleasant memory, something to think on during the cold winter nights when the men had gone to their beds and she couldn’t sleep.
    She took several deep calming breaths, and, smoothing her skirts, made her way to the shelf that held Lady Incognita’s romances. Of course, she had long ago admitted to herself that her passion for such literary fare might be considered unwise.
    In spite of Papa’s predilection for flight, he had insisted that she receive a good education. And one of the things that Miss Rutherford had determined that her charge commit to memory was the revered Dr. Samuel Johnson’s comments on the novel.
    Aurelia recited them to herself: “These books are written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introduction to life.” Well, that seemed true enough. Unlike a romance, a novel was supposed to be real.
    “Vice,” the good doctor continued “(for vice is necessary to be shown) should always disgust.” That was true, too. “It is therefore to be steadily inculcated that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness, and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts, that it begins in mistake, and ends in ignominy.”
    As long as Miss Rutherford had remained in residence, no romances, and only the best novels (and consequently the very dullest), had come within Aurelia’s ken. Human nature being what it is, her desire for the forbidden had only quickened. So as soon as she found herself without supervision, Aurelia had immersed herself in novels of the wrong sort and in numerous romances of terror.
    She was well aware that the problems dramatized in romances seldom presented themselves