Free The Summer of You by Kate Noble Page B

and figure set men afire. Back when she was scrawny and awkward and muddy and sticky and freckled and filled with the joy of being young and at widow Lowe’s door, hoping for lemon cakes with her jasmine tea.
    She saw him smile as she raised her foot to cross the threshold, watched him start and turn as the kettle he had set on the kitchen fire began to whistle.
    Tea. It was hot as blazes, and she was going to sit in the widow Lowe’s parlor and take tea. With, of all the people in all the world, Mr. Byrne Worth.
    “My lady!” A voice came from behind her. Turning, Jane saw a young lad—one of the gardener’s assistants, she recognized—tumble out the wooded path, and head for her.
    “My lady,” the boy said, after a few quick breaths, “I was sent to fetch you—your father . . . the Marquis said—”
    Jane could feel the blood drain from her face. Something must have happened with her father. Another episode? Please, nothing serious. Please.
    She glanced over her shoulder, into the house and met his eyes.
    He was resting his weight against the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed nonchalantly over his chest. He held her gaze, those strange bright blue eyes, razor-sharp in their assessment. But there was something else she saw there, other than intelligence and stone.
    He nodded once, simply. And that’s all she needed.
    With the young lad in her wake, she sped into the wooded path and back to the Cottage. Back to her life.
    And away from him.

    Byrne took the whistling water off the heat, placing it to the side, allowing it to cool, allowing the silence to engulf him. He was alone again. As he had designed and desired.
    He was not good for people. He had long since recognized that fact, and his self-destructive ways were only worse when allowed full rein in the masses. It was the reason he moved all the way up here from London when he inherited.
    That was almost a year ago. Initially, he came up here, intending to allow himself to go to the devil. He knew he couldn’t do it in front of his family, his brothers. They loved him so much it began to hurt. So he would allow himself to fade into his vices, his demons, away from anyone who knew of or about him.
    But he hadn’t been able to—not entirely. Some little part of his mind resisted, insisting that he come back to the fore.
    That same part of his mind won over his body—but that body still resisted being around people. He didn’t trust himself with them.
    But that little part of his mind whispered now, How nice to see a familiar face.
    She’s not that familiar, Byrne countered.
    But at least she knew you—not like the others in town, who have only the worst opinion of you and stay away.
    “They have the worst opinion of me because that’s what I gave them,” Byrne argued, somewhat surprisingly, out loud. “And they stay away because that’s what I wanted.”
    Do you still want it?
    Byrne looked around his little cottage. Its rooms still pristinely his aunt’s—minus a few ornaments and lace, but her crochet work lined the arms of the sofa, her watercolor paintings hung on the walls. But for a moment, when the red-haired inquisition came, flushed scarlet at his wet figure and still proceeded to follow him to the house, defiant of decorum . . . the still little house had felt alive, woken from its long winter. And it had felt warm.
    It was nice to have someone to talk to, other than Dobbs.
    And Byrne had to acknowledge that was true. They had talked surprisingly pleasantly. He hadn’t growled or swiped at her. He hadn’t wanted to.
    But even if he found it pleasant, even if he was struck more than ever by the stillness of his life, he knew the minute he allowed himself to enter into the world again, the minute he went back to London, the minute he let anyone in, he would only end up destroying whatever little pieces of himself he had managed to rebuild.
    He poured out the hot water into the pot of tea. Waited for it to steep. He didn’t even want it