Come Near Me Read Online Free Page A

challenge, a wet
course, a splintered wheel—a ditch.”
    He looked into the fire, seeing Geoff’s body
crumpled, broken, pinned beneath the overturned curricle. The
vision shook him, sickened him, so that he took another deep drink
of brandy.
    “There was also the obligatory storm that
blows up whenever a loved one hasn’t returned home and one must so
out searching for him. It took hours to find Geoff. The longest of
my life.”
    His eyes darkened at another memory, a memory
even worse than that of his brother lying unconscious in the mud.
It knocked at the doors of his mind, begging to come in, sit down,
laugh at him. “Hours,” he repeated, shaking himself back from the
brink of that other memory. “He nearly drowned in that damnable
ditch.”
    “I’m sorry if this conversation hurts you,
Daventry, and I can see that it does. But I must ask you. Your
brother is such a likable fellow. From what you’ve said, he will
walk again, won’t he?”
    The brandy was warming Adam, soothing him,
yet burning deep in his belly. “If there’s a God, yes.”
    “Oh, there’s a God, Daventry,” Edmund told
him, his smile one of almost indulgent amusement. “Most assuredly.
A God. A Heaven. A Hell.”
    “And a purgatory, Burnell?” Adam asked as
some of his own good humor returned. He began to relax, became
determined to enjoy himself in Edmund Burnell’s company. “Does that
exist as well?”
    Burnell spread both his arms, his grin
lighthearted, mischievous. “A purgatory? We’re surrounded by
it, Daventry. Most especially in this room, wouldn’t you say? I’m
particularly fond of that hideous, grinning gargoyle hanging atop
the mirror behind you. If that vision alone isn’t enough to make us
suffer for and repent of our sins, I don’t know what is. Now, let’s
speak of more pleasant things. Tell me how you met your lovely
wife, that dear, delightful creature who is no doubt even now
yawning into her hand and wishing the pair of us back in the
drawing room. My aunt blatantly cheats at whist, you
understand.”
    “Sherry?” Adam closed his eyes a moment, yet
another vision crowding into his brain. How well he could see. Step
back, review the past. See her, hear her, smell her, taste her. It
was the brandy, of course. Tonight it seemed to heighten all of his
senses. He employed it to dull his mind, and, for the most part, it
did its job well. But not tonight. Tonight, when the past crashed
into his skull with such clarity everything and everyone else
disappeared.
    How strange. How wonderful. How sad.
    The room he sat in was forgotten. Edmund
Burnell was forgotten.
    “How we met?” Adam kept his eyes closed, his
hands wrapped around the snifter, the memories drawing closer,
clearer. “We met by accident. Literally by accident,” he began,
speaking softly, almost to himself, allowing the memories nearer,
allowing them in....

Chapter Two
    Before...
     
     
    O tender yearning, sweet hoping!
    The golden time of first love!
    — Johann von
Schiller
     
     
    I t was one of those rare,
golden, early-spring days, an afternoon of sunlight following a
morning of sweet, gentle rain. Tender green leaves glistened damply
as sunbeams danced over them. Freshly scythed grass perfumed the
air.
    Bees droned lazily overhead as Adam Dagenham,
Marquess of Daventry, walked the hills near Daventry Court, his
white shirtsleeves billowing in the breeze, his high, tight leather
boots protecting him now, as he picked his way across a bubbling
stream, agilely hopping from flat stone to flat stone.
    He remembered his route across the water, as he had
been crossing at this particular place since he was a boy. Except
that the stones had seemed larger then, or his feet, smaller.
    He was in the middle of the stream, halfway between
the bank he’d departed and halfway to the bank he desired, when he
heard the shriek. Short. Sharp. Feminine.
    He stopped where he was, one foot secure on a stone,
the other raised. He held his arms out from his