Free Elisabeth Fairchild by A Game of Patience

asked.
    He stole Patience’s away with such a question, with his refusal to be distracted from their intimate topic. She drew a deep breath. Their conversation teetered far more dangerously than Madame Saqui had. She could not respond unequivocally in the negative. Her heart had been touched, after all, by him. Since they were children she had loved him, yearned for him, dreamed of him. She longed to tell him as much, here in the moonlight where a woman had bravely walked a fine line among the stars, but she hesitated, unsure of herself, of him, swaying on the tightrope of her feelings.
    She thought of Sophie Defoe.
    The air smelled of fizzled gunpowder.
    When she responded, her voice, too thin, tripped in her throat. “My heart was touched. Once. Long ago. But tell me what it is like to be truly in love, Pip. And loved enough that you would ask for a young woman’s hand. I must learn from your example.”

Chapter Seven
    Patience braced her heart for a mortal blow.
    Pip laughed, a deep-throated, explosive laughter that turned heads and stirred answering smiles on the faces of those who heard it. Pip’s laughter had always had that effect on people. She must smile as well, though she was unsure just what it was she had said to stir such a boisterous reaction.
    “You assume I marry for love, my dear Patience,” he teased, his voice low, his brows waggling.
    But of course she had. A most provocative remark. What did he mean by it?
    “Mistakenly so?” she asked with a deep thrill of curiosity, wings of hope lifting her heart.
    In a flash of colored satin the lad, Mr. Trumps, dragged Richard into the light of one of the lamps. “Here they are!” he cried.
    Their intimate conversation came to an end.
    “What did you think of Madame Saqui?” Richard asked.
    Before Pip could reply, trumpet fanfare and the patter of gloved applause marked the end of the tightrope walker’s performance.
    “We paid her no mind,” Pip said, and, leaning closer to Patience, added with a conspiratorial smile, “Did we, my dear?”
    Patience knew Pip meant to make Richard feel he had missed out on something. He had used the same ploy as a child. She had always considered it a cruelty in him.
    “Pip was just about to tell me—”
    “A lesson in love,” Pip said with a wink.
    Richard hid all expression behind cover of his mask.
    The cockatoo screeched in Pip’s ear again, as if in protest.
    “I asked Pip to tell me what it is like to be in love,” Patience clarified.
    “Did you indeed?” The dark, winged brows rose. “And how did Pip answer?”
    “I didn’t,” Pip said. “You interrupted us.”
    The bird squawked.
    “Like this bird interrupts us,” Pip complained. “Tiresome thing.”
    “Forgive me,” Richard said evenly. “Please proceed.”
    “What? Looking for lessons in love, yourself, Dickey-boy?”
    “No. Wondering if you have any real understanding of such a state.”
    Pip laughed. “Far more than you, I should think. Certainly far more experience.”
    Pippet threw out his chest, feathers fluffed, ruffling Pip’s hair in the process.
    Pip handed the bird to the boy. “Here, take him away. He grows restive.”
    Patience found herself staring at Richard rather than the transfer of the bird. “Have you fallen in love, too?” she could not resist asking. She could not imagine Richard in love. She could not imagine what he was thinking with his eyes overshadowed by his mask.
    Richard stood motionless, a blackbird, wings folded. He took so long to respond that Pip gave him a shove on the arm and blurted, “Gammon. Not even a bout of puppy love?”
    At exactly the same moment Richard croaked, “I am in love now.”
    Patience gasped.
    “With whom?” Pip demanded.
    Richard turned his back on them, domino swaying, dark as a crow’s tail, as he set off, away from the lights and music.
    “I would rather not say,” he called back over his shoulder.
    Pip looked at Patience wide-eyed. “Who?” he mouthed.
    Patience