Sweet Awakening

Sweet Awakening Read Free

Book: Sweet Awakening Read Free
Author: Marjorie Farrell
Tags: regency historical romance
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her tormentor, threatening Lucy with immersion in the manure pile if she ever hurt Clare again, leaving Lucy cowed and distantly friendly to Clare, ever since.
    * * * *
    Giles was also her friend. He and she could talk about books for hours. And, she eventually realized, Giles was becoming something more.
    It happened the last summer they were all together, the summer before Giles was to go up to university. It was the end of August, and the three of them had planned to go berrying on Clare’s next to last day. But that morning Sabrina sent word through her abigail that the summer cold she had been fighting had finally won, and she was going to spend the day in bed. So Giles and Clare went alone, after an early breakfast.
    It was a glorious day. The heat of the past week had been broken by an evening thunderstorm, and everything was made fresh and green and sparkling again, as though it were June, not August. As they walked to the raspberry thicket, Clare and Giles chatted easily, and perhaps nothing would have changed, were it not for the fox.
    Giles saw her first, a quivering flame weaving herself in and out of the raspberry brambles. He stopped and put his hand on Clare’s arm. “Look, Clare,” he whispered.
    Giles had touched her before, she was sure. He must have over the years. Then why did it feel as though this was the first time? They stood very still, and Giles kept his hand on her arm the whole time they watched the vixen make her way so close to them. Then, at the same moment it seemed, Giles became aware of where his hand was, and the fox became aware of them and was gone in a moment, leaving them each flustered by the physical intimacy.
    “Well, that is something that Sabrina will be sorry she missed,” said Giles nervously, bringing his sister into the conversation as though that would make her physically present.
    “It was wonderful, Giles,” said Clare, and she was not sure whether she meant the sight of the fox or the sensation of his touch.
    It was a black raspberry bramble, and the fruit sparkled garnet and onyx. Every leaf, every tiny hair on every berry leaped out at Clare in detail, so awake and aware was she. As she picked, she put a few ripe berries in her mouth and tasted rain and sun and sweetness.
    “Now, Clare, save some for Mrs. Pleck, or we will have no raspberry crumble for tea,” teased Giles as he popped a berry into his own mouth.
    Clare watched his arm reach out. She had never noticed before how brown his arms were in the summer and how the hair on them was bleached gold by the sun. He was wearing a light cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and as he reached again, she could see his arm muscles ripple. She was so flustered by the languorous feeling that was stealing over her that she thrust her arm in to reach for a cluster of ripe berries and jerked it back with a low cry.
    Giles was at her side immediately. “You have to go slowly and carefully, Clare,” he said sympathetically as she looked at her arm. One scratch was deep, and the beads of blood welling up looked like tiny berries. Giles patted her arm gently with the tail of his shirt while Clare protested.
    “Close your eyes, Clare, and open your mouth,” he chanted the old childhood charm, “and I will give you something to make you feel better.”
    Clare tilted her face toward him. Giles placed a few ripe berries on her tongue, and just as she closed her mouth over them and began to open her eyes, he leaned over and kissed her.
    Although it was a soft and gentle kiss, the intensity of their feelings surprised them both. Giles drew back immediately, embarrassed and ashamed. Clare was only fourteen, hardly out of childhood, although her body was beginning to look like a woman’s, he realized, as for the first time he took in the soft curves of her.
    When she opened her eyes, he stammered something about how his mother would always tell him as a child that a kiss would make it better, trying to put the moment in a

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