Free With This Kiss: Part One by Eloisa James Page A

chestnut hair, but it was his eyes that she thought about most. They were periwinkle blue, a color she couldn’t capture with her paints, no matter how many times she mixed and remixed.
    She wasn’t alone. Even her mother—whom everyone called the most elegant woman in England—laughed, and said that if she had been introduced to Colin at an impressionable age, she never would have given her husband a second look. That would make the duke growl and scoop his wife into his arms, pretending that he was going to carry her off to his pirate’s lair.
    Colin was the kindest boy she knew, too. Once, when she was a little girl and skinned her knee, he had wrapped it up in his own handkerchief, and had told her how brave she was. Ever since, she had felt brave.
    Now that he was a big boy, all of sixteen, she was too shy to hop into his lap the way Lily did. But earlier in the evening, she had leaned against his shoulder while he told a story about a sea dragon and a pirate treasure.
    In the middle of that night Grace was woken by a moan that had come straight through the wall next to her bed. Her room was next to Colin’s, so the noise had to have come from his bedchamber. She sat up, wondering if something was wrong.
    A lady could never enter a gentleman’s chamber. That was a big rule, one of the biggest rules her mother had impressed upon her.
    But Colin was almost like a brother.
    When she heard a second moan, she jumped straight out of bed, and without even thinking about it, made her way into his room.
    “Colin,” she whispered, putting a hand on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
    “I’m hot,” he said with a ragged moan. “Terribly hot.”
    Grace headed for the washbasin, wrung out a cloth, and brought it back to the bed. She wiped his face, trying not to get the bedclothes wet. “I’ll ring for a maid,” she told him, settling the neatly folded cloth on his brow.
    “No maids will come,” Colin said, with another moan. “Nanny McGillycuddy is old. She’s too old to get out of bed.”
    Grace frowned at that, because she realized that his fever must be terribly high if he thought he was in the nursery. On the other hand, he might be right about the maids. In her mother’s household, maids always came within two minutes of a bell, but the same could not be said for Arbor House. “I could fetch our nanny,” she offered.
    Colin flung himself on his side, and the cloth slid off from his head to the floor. “I’m so hot. I shall die in this desert.”
    “Don’t be silly. Of course you won’t die.” Grace reached over so she could feel his head. That’s what her nanny always did when she was ill.
    He grasped her wrist and squinted up at her. “It’s Lily, isn’t it? You’re my favorite. I’ll love you forever, if you’ll please give me some water, sweet Lily.”
    Grace froze. He thought that Lily was coming to his aid?
    There were times when Grace was so jealous of Lily that she wanted to scream, and this was a perfect example. Colin liked Lily so much that he didn’t even realize that Grace was standing right next to him. The truth of it pinched her heart and made her angry.
    The glass on his bedstand was empty, so she went back for the pitcher. She brought it to the bed, but before she could fill the glass Colin sat up and reached toward the pitcher.
    “Let me pour you a glass,” she said, pulling back as he grabbed at it.
    “You’re a brick, Lily,” he said. “You’re the b—”
    His voice broke off as the pitcher upended on his head. Water struck his face and ran in a flood down his chest and even splashed onto Grace’s nightgown.
    For a moment, she felt only satisfaction. She wasn’t such a good girl right now, was she?
    Then a terrible feeling gripped her stomach. She had poured water on Colin, who was ill. Dying, maybe. Never mind the fact that he was laughing, albeit weakly.
    She ran for the door, crying, “Mama!”
    Her mother bundled her back to bed, and Grace lay there,