Dreaming Read Online Free

grazing herd, rope in hand, and proceeded to examine each cow, looking for the one with the kindest eyes.
    A plump Jersey with eyes like Father Christmas appeared just perfect. She even had a small indentation in her brown back that Letty judged to be the size of her very own bottom.
    Now, one would think by looking at them that cows were placid, calm, most biddable animals, content to graze in the fields and chew their cud, their tails whipping up occasionally to swat a few pesky flies.
    They are, usually.
    Her cousins sauntered over near her as she spoke softly to the cow and slid the noose around its thick neck, not realizing that it was her own neck she’d noosed.
    A quick prayer, a deep breath, and she leapt swiftly onto the cow’s bone-hard back. Dear Cousin James slapped its rump with a hand that had a nail hidden in it.
    She hadn’t known cows could scream. The animal bawled and pitched and twisted, landing so hard that Letty’s teeth rang together. At the sound of her cousins’ cruel laughter she gripped the rope even tighter in her small hands and managed to stay on, her pride being at stake along with her life. The former, however, was most important to her at the time.
    One blurred glance at her cousins’ surprised faces and Letty knew she would ride that bovine beast as long as physically possible. So with her teeth ringing and her bottom battering the cow’s spine, they trotted down the hill at a fast clip, splattered through a small brook, and cantered up a dirt road that led to a split-rail bridge spanning the river.
    It was there, on that hollow wooden bridge, atop a bawling, runaway Jersey cow, that Letty Hornsby first met Richard Lennox, who, as divine fate would have it, was returning home from the university.
    Even fate must sometimes succumb to cliché, for he was astride a white horse. Richard Lennox, a blond god whose looks could put the angel Gabriel to shame. A knight to slay dragons. An unsuspecting young man whose blasphemous profanity echoed upward as he was thrown over the side of the bridge and into the mossy waters of the River Heddon .
    Meanwhile Letty clung tightly to a beam of the bridge and watched the cow trot along after his spooked horse. Two rather vivid curses caught her attention, so she turned back and peered over the side to the river below.
    Until the day she died she’d always be able to remember his face as he surfaced to scowl up at her. Oh, it was chiseled classically: high cheekbones, a firm square jaw that carried just a shadow of a dark beard, and a straight, somewhat hawkish nose.
    His skin was tanned a deep golden brown and his hair—now wet, slicked back, and peppered with green moss—was the color of her papa’s fine French brandy, only streaked with blond. He had a dark slash of thick male brows over eyes the color of which were impossible to determine from such a height, but they glittered up at her from a face that said he’d love to get his clenching hands on her.
    The incident set the pattern for their future encounters. Some were more disastrous than others, but, through the years, through the heartache and the embarrassment, never wavering was Letty’s devotion.
    With a faith as strong as a disciple, she’d clung to the heartfelt idea that someday Richard would be hers. He was the center of her lonely world.
    She’d dreamed her hair would suddenly turn into long red tresses guaranteed to catch his eye—which was, by the way, green. She’d discovered the color during an unfortunate incident with a cricket ball.
    Actually he didn’t have one green eye, for if he’d had only one eye he’d have worn a patch—like a dashing pirate. As romantic a thought as that was, Richard Lennox had two green eyes, and they were not the rich green of spring grass nor the bright green of a leprechaun’s suit, but the same dark green of the sprawling Devon moors, of the Channel sea just before the sun sets, of a dangerous forest in which an innocent fairy-tale