Free Whisper on the Wind by Maureen Lang Page A

gave them to you.”
    “They’re more useful here.”
    His hands pressed more deeply into hers. “You confuse me, Isa. You always have. Why should you use your father’s gifts for us?”
    Growing up with so many visits to Edward’s home, she’d only rarely been alone with him, and those occasions had been more rare as they grew older.
    “Every year, my father presented me with one of those rings. An expensive item to pacify me.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “Charles used to tell me the gifts were because our parents felt guilty about not spending time with us and we should take advantage of it. Bribes, of a sort. I suppose my brother received his own share.”
    He let go of her hands and leaned back in his chair. Her fingers felt cold without the warmth of his. “Yes, well, all those engagements at the palace and the queen’s garden parties and endless dinners do have a way of taking one’s time. Your parents were busy.”
    He said it with nearly as much scorn as she would have herself. “Exactly. Not like you, working so hard on your studies and going to the university so young. I’m sorry it burned. I know you wanted to be a professor there someday.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “Your mother.”
    Edward didn’t deny it. “Even though she wanted me to take my father’s place. But it doesn’t matter anymore because the university is gone along with my father’s hotel. But you, Isa, now there’s a different story. You were born into your parents’ way of life, everything revolving around a social season that’s been honored for centuries. When the war ends, you’ll inherit such a life just as soon as you’re old enough.”
    “Old enough!” Her hands lost the memory of how he’d held them so tenderly and clenched into fists. “First of all, Edward Kirkland, I already am old enough . I’m to be eighteen later this year, and that’s plenty old enough to participate in any of my family’s wretched parties, if I wanted to. Which brings me to my second point: I don’t want any such inheritance. I have no intention of being as self-satisfying, as silly, as shallow as my parents.”
    “How did you get away from them?”
    “I left. Perhaps they haven’t even missed me yet.”
    Edward’s brows rose. “They don’t know where you are?”
    “I left a note that I would be traveling and not to worry.”
    “Not to worry over someone traveling to unknown places during an international war.” That he didn’t believe it was possible was all too obvious. “But your brother knows where you were headed.”
    She shrugged. She wasn’t about to tell Edward how she’d manipulated, deceived, overpaid, and circumvented various government authorities to get where she was. How she’d deserted Charles in England when he demanded she return to America. That had been especially heartbreaking, considering he seemed so different from the last time she’d seen him, before the war.
    Sometimes God’s ways weren’t so easy to explain. “I’m here, so God must want me right where I am.”
    Edward laughed outright at that. “So whenever we find ourselves outside His will, we can say it must be His will after all? Even when we’ve broken the rules? Why were you ever sure God wanted you back here?”
    “The goal was always clear; only the details were messy.”
    “It doesn’t surprise me in the least that you misinterpreted what His will might be for you. He’s not often clear about that, and even when He is, it’s not always pleasant.”
    “But He only wants what’s best for us.”
    Edward stood, obviously wanting to end the conversation. Isa stood too, and he put his hands on her shoulders and smiled like an amused older brother might. “I can see you’re convinced of all this, but I hope you—and God—will forgive me if it takes a bit more to convince me that this is where you should be.”
    Her voice abandoned her. He was so close she could breathe in the scent of the soap he used, mixed with