The Beloved Scoundrel Read Free Page A

“Shall I go to the garden and fetch your brother? I’m sure he would tell me why you’re here.”
    “Leave him alone!”
    “Then tell me the truth.”
    She burst out, “Because it was mine!”
    Christ! He hid the excitement that jolted through him. “The pope would not agree. Everything in his churches belongs to God and so to him.”
    “It
is
mine,” she said fiercely. “My grandmother gave it to me before she died last year.”
    He was careful to keep his expression impassive. “How kind of her. And what right did she have to bestow such a gift?”
    “She created it. She said the church did not pay us for the work, so it was still ours.”
    “I fear she told you a falsehood. The Window was created by Anton Pogani, a great craftsman.”
    She shook her head. “He was my grandfather, but it wasn’t he who was the craftsman, it was my grandmother.”
    His brows lifted. “A woman?” Surely no woman could have had the artistry and skill to create the Window’s twenty-three panels portraying man’s climb from the earthly plane to Paradise.
    “That’s why she had to let him lay claim to the work. They would not have accepted the work of a woman. It is always our women who do the work.”
    “Always?”
    She nodded. “For over five hundred years the women in my family have worked with glass. We’re trained from the time we leave the cradle. My mother said I have a special gift, and when I’m grown, I will be as great a craftsman as my grandmother.”
    A flare of hope shot through him. “And just how familiar are you with the Window to Heaven?”
    He had deliberately kept his tone offhand, but she went rigid. Wariness when there should have been no such response. He retreated quickly and changed the subject. “What do the men of your family do while you’re creating these glorious works?”
    A little of her tension eased. “Whatever they wish. They are well taken care of.”
    “Then it’s the women who work to provide the living and care for the men of the family?”
    She looked at him, frowning. “Of course, it is our duty. We always— Why are you looking at me like that?”
    “Forgive me if I find the idea extraordinary.”
    She shifted uneasily. “I must go. Alex is waiting.”
    “And where will you go? I assume your home is in ruins like the rest of Talenka.”
    “We didn’t live here. Our cottage was just outside Samda.”
    Samda was over seventy miles to the west. “Then how did you get here?”
    “We walked.”
    The journey from Samda through this war-ravaged land would have been a rough, dangerous trek even for a man on horseback, and yet the child had been driven to forge her way to the church on foot. “Do you have relatives in Samda?”
    “I have no one anywhere,” she said matter-of-factly, but desolation echoed beneath the words.
    He had a sense of everything coming together. After all the hell and blood that had gone before, Fate had finally got it right! He hadn’t even had to go to Pogani; the Jedalar had come to him. “Then I’ll take you with me.”
    She stared at him, stunned.
    “Come with me,” he repeated. His eyes glinted with recklessness. “It’s clear you were sent to me as a gift, and I never refuse a gift from the gods.”
    She started backing away from him, looking at him as if he had gone mad. Well, he felt a little mad at the moment. Despair and anger had changed to hope, and that could be a heady brew.
    “How can you take care of your Alex without help? He needs hot food and warm clothing. I can give it to you.”
    She hesitated. “Why … would you do this?”
    “Perhaps I wish to do my kindly Christian duty and aid two orphans,” he said mockingly.
    Those clear blue eyes searched his expression. “But I think you’re not a kind man.”
    “How clever of you to realize that fact, but you’re not entirely correct. I do practice kindness … when it’s convenient. It is convenient now. Isn’t that fortunate for you and your Alex?”
    She shook