Free Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 09] - Logic Of The Heart by Patricia Veryan Page B

and you can mend my toe. But you better wait
while I make myself 'spectable."
    She leaned forward, arranging the skirts of her pretty pink
muslin frock with great care, then ruining the effect by sticking her
foot in the air and directing the beam at him once more. "Mend it now,
if you please," she commanded.
    The dress, he noted, was of excellent quality and workmanship,
and when he removed her little shoe he found that it also was of fine
leather and design.
    "You've got pretty hands," she remarked.
    "Thank you." The toe of her shoe was caved in, and her
stocking was torn. He set the shoe aside, and touched her foot gingerly.
    "Is my toe all broke into hund'eds 'n thousands of pieces?"
    "I certainly hope not." He looked up in alarm. "Does it feel
like it?"
    "It feels squashed. I shall prob'ly die. And it'll serve him
jolly well right!" She added with a thoughtful nod, "Then he'll be
sorry, and he'll come to my grave an' cry buckets'n buckets."
    "Who will?"
    "My Uncle Andy. He whipped me with a great club. With spikes
onto it. And I din't do anything
very
bad, 'cept
go near the river." The great eyes came tragically to meet his, and she
appended, sighing, "He'll beat me again if he finds I've goed out
'stead of doing my sums. Don't you tell him, will you?"
    "I think he's far more like to beat
me
,"
he said bracingly, "for knocking you down."
    She considered that and agreed it was very likely, adding the
warning that if Uncle Andy did come, it would be better to run away
quick, "'Cause he's hugeous big an' fierce as four lions."
    Montclair grinned and wiggled the tiny big toe with care.
"Does that hurt?"
    "Hidjus. I'd scream an' have the foggers if I wasn't so brave."
    Foggers… He suggested dubiously, "Vapours… ?"
    "Oh, that's right. Is my shoe full of gore?"
    "No. But a hurt can be just as painful even if it doesn't
bleed. I think you're very brave, and I really am sorry for being so
clumsy."
    She giggled. "I was trying to fright you. I was 'tending to be
the Fury. I 'spect you'll say I din't fright you. Grown-ups always do.
But"—she giggled again—"you should have seen your face!"
    "I think you're a rascal, miss," he said with a twinkle. "And
you see what happened because you played a trick on me. You might have
been really hurt when I knocked you down."
    "I
is
really hurt," she declared
indignantly. "You stamped all over me with your grown-up feet. Did you
fall down too?"
    She was looking at his knuckles, which had become skinned when
they'd connected with his cousin's jaw during their battle yesterday.
    "Something like that." He straightened out the toe of her
shoe. "May I replace your dainty slipper, madamoiselle?"
    She looked at him wistfully. "When you hurt someone you're
s'posed to kiss it better."
    He at once obliged. She sighed rapturously, and gave him
permission to replace her shoe, and after he had been instructed not to
buckle the strap so tightly that her poor foot couldn't "breathe," she
allowed him to help her stand up and to brush the twigs and dirt from
her dainty frock.
    "Thank you," she said politely, and tucked her hand trustingly
into his. "You can come and see my special place if you like." She
turned back to the bleak tower. Montclair frowned and hesitated. She
tugged impatiently, then pushed up the spectacles which had slipped
down her infinitesimal nose, and peered up into his face. "I'll help
it," she said. And before he realized what she was about, she'd pressed
a kiss on his damaged hand.
    He stared at her, touched.
    "Don't be sad," she said kindly. "You'll be all better, quick
as a bird. Only look at me!" She stuck out her foot and wriggled it so
vigorously that she lost her balance and Montclair, laughing, had to
restore her.
    "I like your face," she told him with the open candour of
childhood. "You're not so han'some as my Uncle Andy is, and I really
p'fer my gentlemen to have golden hair. But yours curls a bit, and
you've got d'licious eyes when you laugh only they're a bit