Cupids Read Online Free Page A

through another season. But you are quite mistaken to call the future women of our colony refuse. If you yourself were to come to the dockside when the time comes, as I pray you might, you would find them pleasing and respectable. In the meantime, sir, I bid you good night.”
    As we take leave of the room, Bartholomew’s footsteps shuffle around me, first in front then behind, giving the fleeting impression, no doubt, that we are a two-man country dance. The main chamber now deserted of Eliza and Mrs. Egret, and the lights out, we cross the stone floor for the main door which Helen flutters before us to unlatch. Her candle bobs and nearly dips out as the crisp night air swoops down to claim us.
    â€œGood night, sirs,” she whispers, her voice pregnant with something I cannot quite name — a sense of excitement, perhaps even anticipation — but the door closes behind us. I hear the dropping of a heavy latch.
    A pair of crows, mere outlines against the moonlight, scuttle along the Egrets’ chimney piece and each takes to the air, one following the other in a circular motion.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bartholomew
    â€œ W HY DO YOU ALWAYS take me here,” asks Helen. “Can’t we go inside?”
    In the firelight, her cheek possesses the hue of one of the French peaches on Mr. Egret’s sideboard. Her excitement, edged now with a touch of impatience, makes her even lovelier than she had been when I had slipped her the note at dinner. The story of the mermaids works with her every time, eliciting both wonder and fresh-teased roots of jealousy. I’d suggest Guy use it more often with Miss Eliza. But it’s hopeless. Only a fool would try to breach Eliza Egret’s fortress, surrounded though it may be by waves of flirtation and innuendo. She is firmly grounded in her own worth and means to scoop the cream and leave the rest. Only a fool did try. I almost pitied Guy in the growing silence after he had handed her a whip and tied himself to a post . . . “one part of Bristol dear lady . . .” I could hear the jangling of his coxcomb bells as he spoke.
    â€œDo you not adore the dancing of the flames, Helen? In the new-found-land we love nothing better than to gaze before nature’s hearth and tell stories to one another.”
    I hate open fires really, especially in this small patch of scrubland so close to the Broad Quay docks where we can hear the hubbub of sailors, the wretch of consumptives, and the rhythmic creak of the dockside gibbet. But I have nowhere else to take her, as Guy is keeping me grudgingly enough as a guest already. I don’t mean to provoke him without reason. The pit before us is an old one; half of the logs are already well-charred. I added a few dry twigs but only for effect. They gave off a thick smoke that made Helen cough at first and complain that the smell would linger on her clothes and lead to questions tomorrow. But now there is only flame, she is quite spellbound and I have crept closer to her, inch by inch.
    â€œWhat kind of stories?” she asks. I catch a faint hum of warmth from a shoulder almost touching mine.
    â€œStories of our adventures in the strange new land we have found. Stories of home and the ones we left behind.”
    â€œWhy do you have to leave them behind?” she asks after a short pause.
    I break a twig and fling one part into the flame. A spark rises in response, and then curls into a question mark.
    â€œI was brought up to go into trade, like your master. But the family went bankrupt.”
    â€œStill, you seem to be landing on your feet.”
    â€œAfter a struggle.”
    â€œDo you see them?” she asks, her voice softening.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYour family.”
    The gibbet post groans from the weight of its load. I remember opening my uncle’s bedroom door, see again the rope slung over the beam, my uncle’s white bulging eyes.
    â€œAll dead.”
    â€œSorry,” she whispers.