Brave Hearts Read Online Free

that?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He stopped and looked down; his face grew serious. “I guess I’ve been looking for something all my life.”
    She stared up into intensely alive blue eyes. His hand reached out and gently touched her cheek, a feather-light stroke. “I think I’ve been looking for you.”
    She felt the sudden burn of tears in her eyes; then she turned and walked away, jamming her hands into the pockets of her raincoat.
    He followed and had to bend near to hear her.
    â€œI’ll disappoint you. I’m just Catharine Cavanaugh.” She drew her breath in sharply. “Mrs. Spencer Cavanaugh—and I shouldn’t be here.”
    He reached out and gripped her shoulder and turned her to face him. “But you came.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy?”
    She shook her head at that.
    â€œWhy, Catharine?” he repeated insistently.
    â€œOh, God,” she replied bitterly. “For so many reasons—and I guess all of them are wrong.”
    â€œDo you love your husband?”
    That was the question, the direct challenge, the demand. She stared up at him, her face strained and taut.
    â€œAnswer me, Catharine.”
    Finally, and the pain in her eyes hurt him, she whispered, “No.”
    â€œWhy did you marry him?”
    â€œYou don’t ask much, do you?”
    Abruptly, he pulled her into his arms, curved his arms around her, pressed his face against her hair. She stood rigid in his embrace, and then he said gently, “Please, Catharine. Tell me.”
    Her hands came free from her pockets, and she reached out and clung to him. She clung to him for a long moment, then pulled free and looked away, looked across the water toward Duck Island. “I’d have to go back a good many years.”
    â€œGo back.”
    She stared at the glittering water and, for the first time in ages, permitted herself to remember. “It was the summer I was seventeen . . .”
    It was a sunny, clear afternoon, and the air had that particular soft, silky feel that she would always, the rest of her life, associate with Pasadena. She’d just finished playing tennis with her father, and they looked up at Ted shouting.
    â€œHey, Dad, Cath, I’ve got a friend for you to meet.”
    Catharine shaded her eyes, looked past her brother, and saw a tall, slim man with dark blond hair, sleepy blue eyes, and a curving blond mustache.
    â€œThis is Reggie, Sis. He’s the best polo player in England. Besides that, he shot down thirteen planes in the war.”
    Reggie shrugged away Ted’s grand claims, but it was too late. Catharine was enchanted, and she fell headlong in love, a dreamy, wonderful first love.
    The woman looked back at the girl, then said quietly to Jack, “I suppose I rather overwhelmed Reggie. I thought he was marvelous—and I told everyone so—and he was too much of a gentleman to make me look a fool.”
    â€œHe must have been the fool,” Jack interposed.
    Catharine shook her head, her eyes dark. “We spent every minute together that summer, and I thought it was all settled. Then, without a word to me, he went back to England.”
    She looked up at Jack and wondered what he thought. Could he picture the girl she had been? An eager, confident, happy girl, so different from the woman of today. At seventeen, she was so sure—and willing to plunge ahead no matter what convention might dictate.
    Catharine looked back across the water. “I went to England.” A simple sentence, but what boldness it had required. She marveled now at that act. She had been so decisive, so certain. Oh, God, so very certain.
    Catharine slowly shook her head. “He was too gentle to fend me off, though I began to realize there were times when he drank too much. He drank when he remembered the planes he’d shot down. Once he told me, ‘I could see his face. Catharine, he was just a kid. Just a