At the Edge of Summer Read Online Free

haven’t seen you in days.” Despite the hat, the tip of her nose was pink.
    I bent to pet Bede the springer, who jumped up, wriggling, and licked my wrist. The other, a pudgy mutt we called Ripper, yawned without opening his eyes. “Paris. Remember?”
    She nodded. “Anyway, you’re dressed differently. At first I thought you were a country curate coming across the lawn.”
    I looked down at my black suit, narrow cravat, ink-stained shirt cuffs. “The unofficial uniform of a student.”
    “I liked your red sash. The one you were wearing while you played tennis?” She poked the end of the pencil in her mouth. “You looked like a pirate.”
    “Have you met many?”
    “Pirates? Not as many as I’d like.” She patted the grass and I dropped down next to her, easing my satchel from across my chest. “I used to pretend my grandfather was, though. He was always gone, traveling.”
    “Sailing the seven seas?”
    “Nearly. Africa, India, the Far East. He’s a linguist, you see.” She said this with an air of confession, as though it were a shameful secret. “I haven’t seen him in years. I don’t even know where he’s at now. His last letter came from Ceylon.”
    I cleared my throat. “Does he know about…”
    “Yes.” Her hair swung out over her shoulders so that I couldn’t see her face. “I wrote to him. I told him about Father.”
    A bird fluttered up from the tree, sending down a leaf onto Ripper’s nose. He sneezed and rolled over. “And your mother?”
    She busied herself with her sketchbook. “Oh, I wrote to her, too. I’ve written to her almost every day for the past four years.” Her pencil scraped across the paper so hard the tip broke. “I only wish I had an address.”
    I didn’t know the right thing to say. What to say to a girl whose mother ran off without a backward glance? Maman said that Maud Ross was passionate, vain, impulsive, and stubborn as a she-goat. She loved her friend to the end, but knew Maud would never return.
    Cicadas filled the silence. I scooted closer. “So what are you drawing?”
    “Nothing.” She hunched her shoulders. “A castle.”
    The hem of Clare’s dress brushed my leg. “You’re drawing Mille Mots, aren’t you?”
    “Are there any other castles around?”
    I stretched. “It isn’t really, you know. Just the fantasy of a silly vicomte some centuries ago. He had royal aspirations.”
    Maman fell in love with the château instantly, and Papa had his easel set up outside the tumbled-down old chapel before the first crate was unpacked. The gardens were left wild and overgrown, at her express instructions, and she spent all summer carefully cultivating that wildness. I spent my early years with the outdoors as my classroom. I learned to read amidst the scent of roses and river. Mille Mots was our little heaven.
    “If I had such a house,” Clare said, “I’d have royal aspirations, too.”
    “Not if you knew how much it cost to keep it from falling the rest of the way down.” I regretted the words right as I said them. This girl, with her fancy green dress, buttoned boots, proper British country house, she wouldn’t understand. With all of the money going towards this ragged château, to preserving this precious little bit of paradise, there was nothing left over, even for my tuition. I pushed out a smile, hoping she wouldn’t take me seriously. “But you’re right, it does look like a castle, lost here in the countryside.”
    “I half expected a drawbridge to lower when we arrived.”
    “I was always sure I’d find a sleeping princess hidden behind the roses and thorns.”
    She glanced up from her sketchbook, a look of amusement in her eyes. “I didn’t realize boys read fairy tales.”
    “They do when their fathers found their fame illustrating an edition of Perrault’s
Les Contes de Ma Mère l’Oye.
” I made a face.
    “Perrault’s fairy tales?” The astringent smell of crushed grass rose as she sat up and brushed at a smear of