The Sherbrooke Bride Read Free Page A

eyes water. The day was cloudy and gray. He couldn’t see France today, but when the sky was clear, he could see Boulogne fromthis vantage and the bleak coastline to the northeast toward Calais. He shaded his eyes and stared into the grayness. The clouds roiled and overlapped, but didn’t part, rather they thickened and seemed to press fatly together. He didn’t turn when he heard the horse approach and halt near him.
    â€œI thought you would be here, Douglas. This is your favorite place to think.”
    He smiled even as he was turning to greet his young sister seated astride her mare, Fanny. “I see I shouldn’t be so predictable. I didn’t see you at breakfast, Sinjun, or at lunch. Was Mother punishing you for some infraction?”
    â€œOh no, I forgot the time. I was studying my—” She broke off, lightly slipped out of the saddle and strode toward him, a tall, thin girl, with long legs and wild pale hair that swirled thick and curly around her face, hair once held at the nape of her neck with a ribbon, no doubt, a ribbon now long lost. Her eyes were a vivid sky blue, clear as the day was gray and filled with humor and intelligence. All of his siblings had the Sherbrooke blue eyes and the thick light hair, though Sinjun’s was lighter and filled with sunlight. All except him.
    Douglas was the changeling, his eyes as dark as sin, his old nanny had happily told him many years before, aye, and he looked like a heathen Celt, all dark and swarthy, his black hair making him look like the master of the cloven hoof himself.
    When he was very young, he’d overheard his father accusing his mother of cuckolding him, for his son looked like no Sherbrooke in either their painted or recorded history. His mother, Douglas recalled, had apologized profusely for what she accepted as her error in the production of this, the implausibleSherbrooke heir. Ryder was fond of telling Douglas that it was this un-Sherbrooke appearance that made everyone obey him instantly, for it made him appear so austere and forbidding.
    But as Douglas looked at his sister, his expression wasn’t at all severe. She was wearing buckskins, as was he, a loose white shirt, and a light brown leather vest. Their mother, he knew, would shriek like a banshee when and if she saw her young daughter thusly attired. Of course, their mother was always shrieking about something.
    â€œWhat were you studying?”
    â€œIt isn’t important. You’re worrying again, aren’t you?”
    â€œSomeone must since our government doesn’t seem to want to concern itself with our protection. Napoleon has the best trained and the most seasoned soldiers in all of Europe, and they want to defeat us badly.”
    â€œIs it true that Fox will return and rout Addington?”
    â€œHe is ill, I hear, and the time isn’t yet ripe enough for him to oust Addington. He is as misguided and as liberal as Addington, but at least he is a leader and not indecisive. I fancy you know as much as I do about the situation.” He was well used to his sister’s precociousness—not that precisely, but her erudition, the interest in issues and subjects that should have been years beyond her, things that would leave most gentlemen and ladies blank-faced with disinterest. And she seemed to understand him better than either of his brothers or his mother or the myriad of Sherbrooke relatives. He loved her very much.
    â€œNo, you’re wrong,” she said now. “You must have seen a lot when you went to London last week andspoke to all those men. You haven’t yet told me the latest mood in the war ministry. Another thing, Douglas, you’ve armed all the men on our farms and some in the villages as well. You’ve drilled them over and over again.” On the heels of her very adult appraisal, she giggled like the young girl she was, saying, “It was so funny watching Mr. Dalton pretending to beat away the