Elisabeth Fairchild Read Online Free

all, what everyone had fought to see.
    The Royal china and silver looked ready for a feast. Between the settings, a miniature, serpentine streambed flowed the table’s length, winding between flowered banks, under hump-backed bridges and around a treed island centered in a miniature pool. An intricately carved temple peeped through the trees.
    Entranced, Dulcie yet felt his approach. Anticipated it. His presence bumped up against hers with a physical intensity that made her forget everything but him. All senses focused, her heart skipped a beat, cheeks flushed, breath loud in her ears.
    “There were live fish,” Ramsay said.
    She watched his mouth, wide, generous and tragic, it turned up only faintly when he smiled, unlike the sound of his amusement which rose full blown from his chest as he chuckled. “Dace, roach, gudgeons--little flashes of silver and gold. Royal fish for a royal meal. Very pretty, until halfway through the main course they turned belly up.”
    “Oh, no!” She managed to respond. “How dreadful.”
    His eyes sparkled with the memory, blue flecked with gold, ringed in deeper blue. A glittering strand of hair, golden-red, fell across his forehead, drifted into eyebrows of identical color. She longed to smooth it back into place.
    “Not at all the intended effect. Quite took the edge off a number of appetites.”
    “Mr. Ramsay!” Lydia exclaimed, tone chill, a pale tangerine glow clinging to her flesh. “I had no idea you and Miss Selwyn were acquainted.”
    The two faced one another like stiff-legged mastiffs.  Ramsay’s drawl grew more pronounced. “No cause for alarm, madame. We have only just met.”
    “Mr. Ramsay saved me, Lydia,” Dulcie interjected, distressed by the animosity to be read in her new acquaintance’s gaze. “I would have been trampled, but for him.”
    “Saved her, did you?” Mrs. Oswald made the words ugly. “A turnabout, young man, from the behavior generally associated with your name.”
    Ramsay’s eyes narrowed. The blue corona around his head and shoulders dimmed. “Truth is not always to be found in idle gossip, Mrs. Oswald.”
    She bristled like a hedgehog. “Nor from the mouths of idle young men.”
    The mouth in question pinched tight. He rose not to her bait, turning instead to Dulcie. “I hope you will not mind, Miss Selwyn, if I abandon you to the more than capable care of this very good woman. I have urgent business to attend to.”
    “You may depend upon it,” Mrs. Oswald snapped.
    He ignored Lydia. “I do hope your head mends swiftly.”
    Dulcie felt bereft that he meant to leave so abruptly. “Of course. You must go.”
    He sketched a bow and would have walked away, had she not begun to unbutton the borrowed coat, saying, “Wait! Sir!”
    “My dear!” Lydia gasped.
    Ramsay turned, took in the intent of her fingers and smoothly reached out to halt them.
    “Keep it,” he said.
    The future touched her by way of his fingertips, the image fleeting. She saw these hands, square boned, faintly freckled, unbuttoning--as urgently as he now rebuttoned his coat. Her cheeks burned. Heat rose in her chest and neck. The tightness of his mouth eased. She could not take her gaze from lips she pictured on hers.
    “Sending you home without it would only serve to further confirm my unhappy reputation,” he said.
    Light and heat raced from his palm to hers, infusing her hands, and heart. She knew at once the reputation to which he referred, and yet she managed to stammer,  “You are kind, sir, to concern yourself.”
    He released his fleeting hold, the images vanishing along with his touch. His light alone bound her to him, and that was fading, his mind elsewhere.
    “Your coat, sir? Where shall I direct it? Or will you call on my father to fetch it? I am sure he will want to thank you personally.”
    Mrs. Oswald cleared her throat.
    Ramsay ignored her, shook his head, red hair licking like flames at his neckcloth. “I regret to say I shall not be in a