So in Love Read Online Free Page B

to her room. She would stand in front of him as she had earlier, attired in her modest blue dress, her head bowed, her gaze on the floor. A different creature, in so many ways, from the girl he’d known.
    His imagination so wanted the encounter with her that he could feel his breath grow tight at the thought of seeing her again.
    Deliberately, he pushed away the memories of those earlier days. He would not recall that afternoon in the conservatory when her laughter had been a backdrop to the rainy day. Or that morning when she had lain upon a knoll with her hair spread out over the grass. He’d leaned over her with a daffodil held in his hand, tickling her chin. She’d responded by granting him a kiss for every brush of the flower’s petals.
    Those recollections were of a different woman, a different place. He was not the same person he had been in Paris. And Jeanne? How could he have loved someone so deeply and yet been so blind to her character?
    The mist on his face was almost suffocating, the air felt so thick that he could barely breathe.
    The idea of a confrontation was foolish. Besides, perhaps she wouldn’t sleep alone in her third-floor room after all. Douglas wouldn’t be unduly surprised if she’d already consented to be Hartley’s mistress. She’d proven to be a survivor, perhaps she was also an opportunist.
    The rear lanterns on his carriage glowed yellow, a nimbus of light for him to follow in the fine mist. His hair wasdamp, his coat sparkled with a thousand tiny droplets, yet he still stood there staring at the third-floor light. In Paris he’d done the same, watching the great house of the Comte du Marchand, waiting for dawn and Jeanne. When her signal came, he would meet her at the garden gate.
    Now, determinedly, he turned and walked away.
    The city matched his mood tonight, everything shuttered and silent. Lantern light would periodically pierce the darkness, but nothing could lighten the gloom for long. Edinburgh sometimes possessed a brooding quality, hunched beneath a dark, cloud-filled sky. Above all, there was the hint of history, as if these hills and narrow cobbled streets had been witness to countless human acts, some kind and compassionate, others malevolent and predatory. Edinburgh’s past was replete with a history of plotting and planning. Men had died, monarchs had fallen, and fortunes had been lost or won as a result.
    At night, sound carried so well that Douglas could almost imagine the slide of a dirk from its sheath or whispers in the darkness from a hundred furtive meetings, a thousand promises. There were rumors that there was a city beneath the city, whole streets where people lived out their lives in darkness and relative safety. The poor of Edinburgh were periodically rounded up and shunted to another section of the city, and some had, it was said, taken refuge in these places far from sunlight and free from taxes.
    In less than fifteen minutes he was on Queen’s Place. His red brick home was adorned with a white door and black shutters. Tall windows lined the first and second floors, only two of them now lit by candlelight. The third floor was embellished with half-moon windows that looked like drooping eyelids. On the roof were eight chimneys, one of them still sending tendrils of white smoke into the dark and cloud-filled night sky.
    Douglas noted with some satisfaction that his home was much larger than Hartley’s.
    The were wealthier and more influential than they had ever been. And happier? A question his brother Alisdair had asked him not that many weeks ago. Douglas had responded with a nod, introspection making him impatient. He disliked searching the contents of his soul. There were too many dark corners there to make him entirely comfortable with the task.
    He waved to his coachman standing beside the curb and Stephens nodded. A moment later, the carriage was turning the corner and heading for the stables.
    As he reached for the door handle, it opened in front