Free To Seduce an Angel by Kate Moore

afraid that the simplest joy might be snatched from him any minute.
    â€œThe world you speak of may have few delights. It may be hard on boys, but if today Robin has a toad and a river to delight in, I ask you to let him have his delight.”
    â€œ De-light . Now there’s a word that our kind of boy don’t hear in London. Is that one of the words on your slates, grinder?”

    DAV parted from Henry Norwood at three. He needed the roof. He had been patient with hours of legal talk while thoughts of his new grinder intruded. He would read Norwood’s full report in the days ahead, looking for the places in it that would show him how to beat his grandfather. He headed up the north stairs and met Emma Portland coming down them. She had something cupped in her gloved hands that claimed her whole attention so he had a moment to look at her without her notice.
    An old black bonnet covered her bright hair, but when she looked up, blue was what he saw. He tried to recall what had made him so suspicious of her the night before.
    â€œWhat have you got? You’re like to break your neck if you don’t mind the steps and your cloak.”
    â€œOh, it’s you.”
    He blocked her way. “No one else. What’s in your hands?
    â€œRobin’s baby dragon. Do you want to see it?”
    He raised a brow. She lifted her cupped hands and it felt like an invitation, so he fitted his hands around hers. As soon as he touched her, he knew he had been wanting to touch her since yesterday. She tilted her upper hand slightly so that he could see the creature huddled inside.
    It was a toad, a common toad, brown and speckled, knobby and squat. Its amber, jewellike eyes stared unblinking. She held it as gently as possible, but the frightened creature’s pulse quickened. Dav felt the rapid beat of his own pulse, glad for the concealing linen around his throat.
    â€œLooks like a toad to me.”
    She closed her hands and looked up at him, the blue dazzling. She gave a slow reproachful shake of her head as if he were a thickheaded student.
    â€œWhat? Are you an admirer of toads?” He hardly knew what he was saying with her hands still cupped in his.
    â€œHe’s quite handsome if you think of him as a dragon.”
    â€œBut homely if you’re in the toad faction.”
    She withdrew her hands from his. “Well, I’m in the dragon faction, and we’re going to find this fellow a proper home on the riverbank.”
    He looked at her again. He’d just shared a light moment with her, and he’d thought the only brightness in her spirit was in that hair.
    â€œDon’t fall in.” He stepped aside, and she passed him, but it was another minute before he remembered whether he had been going down or up.
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    FROM the roof he could see the faded rose of her cloak against the browns and faint greens at the edge of the river. The green surprised him. He’d arrived at Daventry Hall in late November and come to expect a perpetual winter landscape, like the rooftops of London. He liked a muted landscape, another reason to prefer the roof of the hall to its luxurious rooms with their brocaded walls in rich colors. In London he could read colors from leaden and ashy grays to umbers and deep coffee browns to rusts and coppers, and know the heat and texture of a rooftop. Here in the country, where he could not roam freely from rooftop to rooftop, he had learned to drive. The bare fields bounded by ditches and leafless hedgerows had at first been blank slates of earth, but now he was learning to pick out the marks of a harrow or a plow and identify the bits of stubble clinging to the clods.
    Below him at the river’s edge the boys chased after one another and sent birds flapping into the air. His gaze followed the red cloak and black bonnet, and he felt the scene sink to dullness when they disappeared below the bank. He was surprised at the difference that bit of red made in