A Second Spring Read Online Free

flecks danced in his brown eyes. Her pulse racing, she moistened suddenly dry lips as a flood of heat washed through her.
    Her face was aflame. She pulled back out of his arms, stepped back, turned away, fleeing danger. But the danger was in herself, not in him. She dared not look at him lest he read the desire in her eyes. It was indecent for a respectable widow of her years to feel that way.
    “Are you all right?” He sounded shaken. Had he read her mind? No, of course, she had narrowly escaped falling in the lake and had nearly pulled him in with her.
    “Yes, quite all right,” she said in a stifled voice. “Thank you for saving me. I am sorry.”
    “Whatever for?” Now he seemed deliberately to misunderstand. “I had no intention of going with Mrs Rosebay,” he went on calmly. “She has the twins for company. If you permit, I shall walk with you back to the Dower House. Will you not take my arm? You have had a shock.”
    His obliging offer was impossible to refuse. Catriona laid her hand lightly on his arm, and they turned down the path along the bank. Whatever he guessed to be the cause of her agitation, he set out to distract her.
    “The skiff is comfortable,” he said, “but less stable I believe than the canoes we used in Canada. I should not care to trust it on a whitewater river.”
    He went on to talk of the natives’ skill with canoes, their wretched treatment at the hands of the Northwest Company, and the treatise on the subject Lord Selkirk was writing.
    “When we met his lordship in Montreal, we promised him to do what we can to influence the government to pass laws protecting those unfortunate people. Harry and I have been writing letters, and next month, when Parliament sits, we shall go up to Town to speak to people face to face. Money talks. I ought perhaps to tell you,” he added awkwardly, “that I returned from India something of a nabob.”
    Her discomfort thoroughly dispelled, Catriona stared at him. “A nabob! You have been sailing under false colours, sir. Did you not claim to be a rolling stone? Don’t laugh at me, you odious man! A sailing stone may be an infelicitous image, but you know very well what I mean.”
    “To complete the confusion of metaphor, you must not tar all of us rolling stones with the same brush. Some of us do gather moss. What would you have thought of me had I announced on entering your sitting room that, far from being saved from poverty by my inheritance of the manor, I am well able to buy an abbey?”
    “I would have thought you a vulgar, ungrateful braggart.”
    “Well, I cannot quite afford an abbey, and I’m proud to be a March of Marchbank.”
    “And I think you a truly gallant gentleman,” said Catriona softly as they reached the Dower House’s back gate. “I shall not invite you in, Sir Gideon, as the turmoil attending on the arrival of two wet children is no place for a visitor. But I would have you know that I am most sensible of your kindness—”
    “Gammon!” he said roughly, and turned to stride away.
    She stood for a moment in the shade of the great elm and watched his tall figure until he was lost to sight in the copse. With a sigh, she went through the gate and into the house to see that water was heating and towels were warmed for her grandchildren.
    * * * *
    The first frost of autumn came that night. Leaves began to change colour, and clouds of swallows gathered to fly south. The first russet-cheeked apples arrived from the manor orchards. Winter clothes were brought out to be aired.
    Several days of constant, chilly rain kept the twins indoors. After their lessons, they were unable to work off their energy in the small house. Up at the manor, they would have raced up and down the corridors with their hobby-horses, or built and attacked fortresses of tables and chairs and old sheets. Here at the Dower House, they fussed and whined and squabbled.
    It was enough to ruffle anyone’s spirits, Catriona convinced herself. Her megrims