Beyond the Sunrise Read Free

here too,” he said with a shrug,
    She looked up at him eagerly—the top of her head reached barely to his shoulder. “Yes,” she said. “I shall steal away and spend time with you, Robert. It will be fun and my maid is very easy to escape. She is lazy, but I never complain to Papa because sometimes it is an advantage to have a lazy maid.” She laughed her light infectious laugh. “You are very handsome. Will you take me to the ruins tomorrow? We went there two days ago, but the marchioness would not let me explore them lest I hurt myself. All I could do was look and listen to your father tell the history of the old castle.”
    â€œI will take you,” he said. But he noted the fact that she had spoken of stealing away
to be with him. And of course she was right. It was not at all the thing for the two of them even to have met. They certainly should never have talked or danced. Or kissed. There would be all hell to pay if he were caught taking her to the ruins. He should explain that to her more clearly. But he was seventeen yearsold, and the realities of life were new to him. He still thought it possible to fight against them, or at least to ignore them.
    â€œWill you?” she asked eagerly, clasping her hands to her slender, budding bosom. “After luncheon? I shall go to my room for a rest, as the marchioness is always urging me to do. Where shall I meet you?”
    â€œThe other side of the stables,” he said, pointing. “It is almost a mile to the ruins. Will you be able to walk that far?”
    â€œOf course I can walk there,” she said scornfully. “And climb. I want to climb up the tower.”
    â€œIt is dangerous,” he said. “Some of the stairs have crumbled away.”
    â€œBut you have climbed it, have you not?” she said.
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œThen I shall climb it too,” she said. “Is there a good view from the top?”
    â€œYou can see to the village and beyond,” he said.
    The music was playing a quadrille in the drawing room.
    â€œTomorrow,” she said. “After luncheon. At last there will be a day to look forward to. Good night, Robert.”
    She held out one slim hand to him. He took it and realized in some confusion that she meant him to kiss it. He raised it to his lips and felt foolish and flattered and wonderful.
    â€œGood night, Miss Morisette,” he said.
    She laughed up at him. “You are a courtier after all,” she said. “You have just made me feel at least eighteen years old. It is Jeanne, Robert. Jeanne the French way and Robert the English way.”
    â€œGood night, Jeanne,” he said, and he was glad of the darkness, which hid his blushes.
    She turned and tripped lightly over the cobbles of the terrace and around to the side of the house. She had, he realized, come out through the servants’ entrance and was returning the same way. He wondered if she had come out merely for the fresh air or if she had seen him from an upstairs window. The window of her bedchamber overlooked the terrace and the fountain.
    He liked to believe that it was his presence out there that had drawn her. She had called him tall. She had not commented on his thinness, only on his height. And she had called the blondness of his hair lovely and had approved of the fact that he liked to wear it overlong. She had called him handsome—
very
handsome. And she had asked him to kiss her. She had asked him to take her to the ruins the next day. She had said that at last there would be a day to look forward to.
    He was no longer merely attracted to her slim dark beauty, he realized, the sounds of music and gaiety from the drawing room forgotten. He was deeply, irrevocably in love with Jeanne Morisette.

    *   *   *
    She had caught sight of him several times since her arrival at Haddington Hall, though she had not been formally introduced to him, of course. Her father had