The Sherbrooke Bride Read Free Page B

Frogs with that gnarly stick!”
    â€œHe was best at retreating and hiding. I’d rather have trained his wife. Now she would be the kind of mean-boned soldier the French would fear.”
    Sinjun said abruptly, her light blue eyes taking on a gray hue, “I saw the Virgin Bride last night.”
    â€œI overheard you telling your friends. Your audience was most appreciative, albeit so gullible it was embarrassing. But, my dear girl, it is all nonsense, and you know it. You must have eaten turnips for dinner and it turned your dreams to phantoms.”
    â€œActually I was reading in the library.”
    â€œOh? I pray you won’t tell your mother if you chance to peruse my Greek plays. Her reaction staggers the brain.”
    She smiled, distracted. “I read them all two years ago, Douglas.”
    He smacked his palm to his forehead. “I should have known.”
    â€œI think the most interesting one was called Lysistrata, but I didn’t understand how the ladies could expect their husbands to just stop fighting just because they threatened to—”
    â€œYes, I know what the ladies did,” he said quickly, both appalled and amused. He eyed her, wondering if he should attempt some sort of brotherly sermon, or at least a caveat on her reading habits. Before hecould think of anything relevant to say, Sinjun continued thoughtfully, “When I went upstairs around midnight, I saw this light beneath the door to the countess’s chamber, next to yours. I opened the door as quietly as I could and there she was, standing by the bed, all dressed in white, and she was crying very softly. She looked just like all the stories have described. She was very beautiful, her hair long and straight to her waist and so blond it was almost white. She turned and looked at me, and then she simply vanished. Before she vanished, I swear that she wanted to say something.”
    â€œIt was turnips,” Douglas said. “You forgot you ate them. I cannot credit the ghost. No intelligent person would credit a spiritual phenomenon.”
    â€œThat is because you haven’t seen her and you don’t trust a female to report the unvarnished truth. You prefer vegetables for an explanation.”
    â€œTurnips, Sinjun, turnips.”
    â€œVery well, but I did see her, Douglas.”
    â€œWhy is it that only women see her?”
    Sinjun shrugged. “I don’t know if it is only women she’s appeared to. All past earls who have written about her have claimed it to be only women, but who really knows? In my experience, gentlemen aren’t inclined to admit to anything out of the ordinary. They won’t take the risk of looking foolish, I suppose.”
    Douglas continued, as sardonic as could be. “Your experience, hm? So you think our Virgin Bride was standing over the bed, bemoaning the intactness of her maidenhead, knowing that her bridegroom would never come? Thus she was doomed never to become a wife and a mother?”
    â€œPerhaps.”
    â€œMore likely the chit remarried within a year, bore sixteen children like every good sixteenth-century woman did, and died of old age, hair straggly and gray, and no teeth in her mouth.”
    â€œYou’re not at all romantic, Douglas.” Sinjun turned to watch a hawk fly close overhead, its wings wide and smooth, a beautiful sight. She then gave Douglas a smile that was dazzling in its pleasure. It shocked him. She was a little girl, only fifteen, and this wondrous natural smile gave promise of the woman she would become. Actually, he realized, it scared the hell out of him.
    â€œBut I did see her, Douglas, and others have as well. You know there was a young lady whose husband of three hours was murdered and she killed herself when she heard the news. She was only eighteen. She loved him so very much she couldn’t bear to live without him. It was tragic. It was written down in full detail by Audley Sherbrooke, the First