Beyond the Sunrise Read Free Page A

explained to her that he was the bastard son of the marquess and that really it was not at all respectable for him to be living at the house. It must be very distressing for the marchioness, her papa had said, especially since the poor woman was apparently barren and had been unable to present the marquess with any legitimate heirs or even any daughters.
    Jeanne did not care about the fact that he should not be there at the house. She was glad that he was, and only sorry that it was not possible to be openly friendly with him. She had not met many boys or young men during her life, having had a sheltered upbringing with her father and having been sent to a school where she and her fellow pupils were kept strictly from the wicked male world beyond their walls.
    In her boredom and loneliness at Haddington Hall, she had watched him covertly whenever she had had a chance, most notablyfrom the window of her bedchamber. And she had quite fallen in love with his lean and boyish figure and his longish blond hair.
    On the night of the ball—though both her father and the marchioness had tried to console her by assuring her that it was not really a ball—she had stood moodily at the window of her room and seen him, at first on the terrace and then disappearing to the far side of the fountain and not reappearing. He must be sitting on the seat there. She had already dismissed her maid for the night. Her breath had come fast and excitement had bubbled in her as she felt the temptation to slip downstairs and outdoors unseen to talk with him.
    She had given in to temptation.
    She had been dazzled. She had not realized quite how tall he was or how handsome his face with its aquiline nose and firm jaw and very direct eyes. He was seventeen years old, a young man, not the boy she had at first taken him for.
    He was the first man she had danced with apart from her dancing master at school, and he was the first man to kiss her, not just that first time in the way her father might have kissed her, but the second time, when his lips had lingered on hers and she had felt delightfully wicked right down to her toes.
    She was in love with him before she had finished running lightly upstairs to her room and before she had closed her door behind her and leaned back against it, her eyes closed, and tried to remember just exactly how his mouth had felt. And then she opened her eyes and raced to the window and drew back again half behind the heavy velvet curtains so that she could watch him wander up and down the terrace without herself being seen. But she need not have worried—he did not look up.
    She was in love with him—with a tall and slender blond god who was all of seventeen years old. And who had the added attraction of being forbidden fruit.
    They had four days together—four afternoons when she was dutifully resting in her room as far as her father and the marquess and marchioness knew. They went to the ruined castle on the firstday and he climbed the winding stone stairs of the tower ahead of her, turning frequently to point out to her a chipped or crumbled stair where she would have to set her feet carefully. She was more frightened than she would admit and almost squealed with terror when they came out into daylight at the top and she discovered that the parapet had quite fallen away so that there was nothing to protect them from the seemingly endless drop to the grass and ruins below. But she merely shook out her hair—she had disdained to wear a bonnet—and looked boldly about her.
    â€œIt is magnificent,” she said, stretching out her arms to the sides. “How wonderful it must have been, Robert, to be the lady of such a castle and to have watched from the battlements for her knight to come riding home.”
    â€œAfter an absence of seven years or more, doubtless,” he said.
    She laughed. “What an unromantic thing to say,” she said. “Anyway, I would not have let him go alone. I