Page 24 of Better Love Next Time
She leapt into his arms with a squeal. The starlings burst from the oaks as Julian spun her around. She stiffened as he set her down and the earth shook beneath her.
“My father’s near. We need to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because he worries you might marry me and make children with me.”
His masculine features screwed in horror. “I’d never do that to you.”
The first brown-and-black hounds bounded from the north woods on their left. Julian caught her hand and ran right, escaping into a stand of birch as her father and brother galloped past in pursuit of a black-footed fox.
Kitty prayed the fox got away and her father took a fall to forever keep him from mounting a horse and shooting a gun.
“Bloodthirsty dolts,” Julian muttered, before gazing down at her from his astonishing height. It afforded a panorama of his smile. “Are you certain you’re related?”
“How could I not be?”
“Easy enough.”
“But how? I would so much like to be an orphan.”
“You don’t want to be an orphan, trust me. I’ve seen them. Come. I have a surprise.”
Leading through woods and fields knee-high with barley, taking the brunt of a hawthorn hedge to allow her to pass, Julian remained silent until a squirrel scampered across their path, and leaping to a tree, froze spread-legged on the craggy trunk.
“Where’s Daisy?” he asked, picking a twig from her hair.
She wouldn’t spoil his surprise. “I left her at home.”
“Getting fat on carrots?”
She smiled weakly.
His eyes flattened in a serious line. “Is she ill?”
“No. Not ill.” She widened her smile. “Does the surprise have to do with her?”
“I did make a special place for her. A throne, if you will.” They were off again, covering another half mile, the ground growing soft with the rains and the swelling banks of the river.
Losing a shoe, she dislodged it from the muck and straightened as Julian pressed a tree bough aside. There ahead, floating in the sparkle of sun and the rippling river water, sat a boat. Single-masted with the sail reefed and oar locks for narrow passages and windless days.
She walked to the lapping water and reeds. Apart from Julian and the sunrise and the memory of her mother, it was the most beautiful sight she’d ever laid eyes upon.
Near the stern sat an open box filled with straw, with daisies carved on its walls.
Oh, Daisy, he did love you.
She blinked away a rush of tears. “Did you build this?”
“Mm-hmm,” Julian murmured at her ear. “And I named herFairy.”
CHAPTER SIX
Present Day
July 1765
Off the Coast of Hampshire, England
