Free Regina Scott by The Heiresss Homecoming Page B

the hillside. Tree limbs dangled over a pool of water, surrounded by stone. Shadows danced across the green expanse, and the air was moist and loud with the sound of falling water.
    He wasn’t sure she could hear him approach, so he cleared his throat. She kept her gaze on the cliff side, where a freshet tumbled down over black stones.
    “I wasn’t quick enough,” she said, voice as heavy as the spray-dampened branches hanging over the water. “We missed the rainbow.”
    So that’s what she was after. Will shook his head. What other woman would climb through a forest, dressed as she was for church, on the chance of finding a rainbow in the spray of a waterfall? She sounded so disappointed to have missed it that he wanted to find that rainbow for her, if only to see the matching glow on her face.
    “Perhaps if you give it a moment,” he said, glancing up at the sun and noting its angle to the water.
    “Oh!” She whirled to face him, cheeks darkening. “I thought you were Jamie.”
    “My son has been detained,” Will said with a bow. As he straightened, he nodded toward the falls. “Take a few steps to the left and see what happens.”
    She nodded happily, as if Will had granted a fervent wish. “Good idea.”
    To his surprise, she seized his hand and pulled him to the left with her. She positively vibrated with anticipation. He found himself waiting with equal eagerness.
    “Watch now,” she whispered as if afraid of scaring the rainbow away.
    Across the stream, color began to sparkle in the air. Deep red, vibrant orange, bright yellow, vivid green, blue and purple. A rainbow more pure and clean than the one he’d seen in the chapel arched across the spray, framing the falls in splendor.
    “Isn’t it magnificent?” she murmured, giving his hand a squeeze. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.”
    “I have,” Will said, watching her. He was glad she didn’t question him, or he’d have had to find a diplomatic way of evading an answer. For how could he admit that in all his travels, from the palaces along the Bosporus Sea near Constantinople to the pyramids of Egypt, the most beautiful sight he’d ever beheld was her?

Chapter Seven
    S he’d found the rainbow. Samantha sighed with pleasure. Sunshine at precisely half past eleven was rare in the Evendale valley, where misty mornings were more often the norm even in the summer. Sighting the rainbow was just as rare.
    “How did you know this was here?” Lord Kendrick asked, and she could hear a similar awe in his voice.
    The memory was a mix of pain and joy. “I found it,” Samantha admitted. “I escaped from services one day at exactly the right time.”
    “I’m surprised your mother let you out of her sight,” he said, but his voice held more humor than censor.
    “She seldom attended services with Adele and Mrs. Dallsten Walcott and me,” Samantha replied, remembering. “I didn’t understand then, but now I think she didn’t like the whispers.”
    “Whispers?”
    His voice remained kind, interested, so she answered though she kept her gaze on the cool water.
    “There were rumors, unfounded as it turned out, that my mother and father were not legally wed, that I was illegitimate. Even knowing the truth, my mother didn’t like hearing them.”
    “I imagine you didn’t either.”
    Now he sounded more censorious, but she hoped his frustration was aimed at the gossips.
    “I am very thankful my governess Adele Walcott sheltered me from much of it,” Samantha told him. “But after Mother died, nothing could console me. I ran away from the manor several times. I wanted my father so desperately.”
    “Fathers can be important to a child.”
    The pain in his voice drew her gaze to his face. His muscles were still, chiseled. His gaze was fixed on the waterfall, as if he’d ceased to see its beauty and instead saw a boy who had been just as lonesome for his father.
    “Yes, they can,” she agreed. “That’s why I’m glad you