Free The Wild Child by Mary Jo Putney Page B

The Greeks were a quarrelsome lot, but they left us wonderful stories.”
    He had a brief flash of memory: he and Kyle acting out the Trojan War, when they were seven or eight. His brother was noble Ajax, while Dominic chose to be wily Odysseus. They’d been too young to recognize how characteristic their choices were.
    Shaking off the image, he continued, “Shall I read to you in the evening, Meriel? I would enjoy that.” He liked the idea of bathing her in the great tales of classical literature. Perhaps such a flow of words would make a connection in her mind that would help bring her back to the world. He glanced again at that impassive, perfectly carved profile. Perhaps not; maybe the damage done to her as a child could never be repaired. It was so damned unfair.
    No longer in the mood for a one-sided conversation, he fell silent until they reached the garden sheds. She went straight for the glass house. Inside, Kamal was tending to the pineapple plants. All the best houses grew pineapples to impress guests; Dornleigh had devoted half a glass house to their cultivation. Kamal glanced up casually at their entrance, his brows rising a little at the sight of Dominic. He had probably assumed that a pampered aristocrat wouldn’t last long trimming shrubs. Inclining his head respectfully, he said to Meriel, “You should eat something before going off again, milady.”
    As Meriel gazed at him expectantly, the Indian moved down the aisle until he found a pineapple that pleased him. Then he pulled a glittering dagger from a sheath mostly concealed by the sash at his waist and harvested the pineapple from its spiky growth. After trimming off the bristly brown skin, he laid the fruit on a clean cutting board. A dozen wicked slashes of the dagger sliced the pineapple from its tough core into eating wedges. As he watched the expert knife work, Dominic made a mental note never to provoke Kamal’s temper.
    With a courtly bow, the Indian offered the board of sliced fruit, juice oozing over the edges. “My lady. My lord.”
    Meriel took a wedge and bit neatly into the golden flesh with small white teeth. Dominic took a piece also, but paused before eating. “Will you join us, Kamal?” When the Indian hesitated, Dominic added,
    “Our Bible says that the oxen who tread out the grain should not be prevented from tasting the products of their labor. Surely that is even more true for a master gardener who grows such beautiful fruit.”
    “You are gracious, my lord.” Kamal set the board on the adjacent workbench and took a slice of pineapple. Though his words were flawlessly polite, there might have been an edge of irony in his tone. The Indian didn’t seem like a man whose thoughts would ever be simple ones. Dominic bit into his wedge of pineapple. It was the finest he’d ever eaten, tart and sweet and luscious with juice. If he were ten years old, he would have moaned with pleasure. He barely refrained from doing so even at his advanced age. “Superb, Kamal.”
    Apart from that comment, the three of them consumed the pineapple in silence. Dominic’s London friends would have laughed at the sight of him eating in a glass house with a foreign servant and a beautiful mad girl. Yet though it was hardly a normal luncheon, he enjoyed it immensely. After finishing her portion, Meriel turned and headed toward the far end of the glass house. Dominic asked, “Do you know what she plans on doing this afternoon?”
    Kamal swallowed his last bite of pineapple. “No, my lord, though often she prefers a different kind of task from what she did in the morning.”
    So probably no more pruning today. Dominic went after Meriel, who had halted by the pump in the far corner of the glass house. Seeing that it was awkward to work the handle and wash at the same time, Dominic took over the pumping, his hands bracketing her much smaller one. Accepting his help, Meriel washed and dried her hands on a shabby but clean towel that hung from a nail. She