Sweet Rogue of Mine (The Survivors #9) - Shana Galen Page 0,7

quite,” she said, waving her hand. She knew a shortcut through the brush to the village road. She only took it when she had stayed later than she should as the thick underbrush snagged her skirts, but that wouldn’t matter today. Her skirts were already a lost cause. She watched Mr. Pope start away and then turned and scampered back the way she had come. A glance over her shoulder showed her he was intent on his path and not watching her. A little while later, she was well on her way and safely out of his hearing. With a deep breath, she returned to her song.

“The birds they were singing in the bushes and trees.

The song that they sang was, O she's easy to please.

I felt her heart quiver and I knew what I'd done.

Says I, Have you had enough of my old sporting gun?"

“But of course she hasn’t had enough of his sporting gun,” Pru said to herself. Then hummed a bit as she couldn’t remember the way the next verse began. So she sang again, “I felt her heart quiver and I knew what I'd done.”

Her own heart had quivered when Mr. Pope had landed on top of her. Perhaps that was why she’d been unable to stop laughing. He’d smelled clean, and the weight of him, when he’d stopped crushing her, was pleasant enough. She supposed it was a good thing she was plain and all but invisible to most men, else she might be as much a wanton as the wench in the song.

Ah, and that reminded her of the next verse.

“Oh, the answer she gave me, her answer was, Nay.

It's not often, young sportsman, that you come this way.

But if your powder is good and your bullets play fair,

Why don't you keeping firing at the bonny black hare?"

Pru emerged from the garden by degrees. First the trees thinned, then the flowering bushes receded, and finally the green graduated to yellow and brown as she started toward the road leading to Milcroft. She didn’t know why the garden should hold on to the green of summer when the rest of the world had succumbed to the colors of autumn. Perhaps it was some sort of enchantment.

Oh, but she could weave a vastly entertaining story about fairy queens and enchantments, but then she would grow lost in her thoughts and be late for supper. She might be late anyway. And so she lifted her skirts and ran most of the way back to the village.

When she reached the vicarage, she slowed, and tucked the loose pieces of her hair behind her ears. She could hear Mrs. Blimkin at work by the clank of pots and pans. Pru glanced at the sky and figured supper was still being prepared and not being put away. With Mrs. Blimkin busy in the kitchen, it would be better to enter through the main door, though that meant Pru risked being spotted by the vicar. But perhaps he was in his small library, hard at work on the sermon he was to give tomorrow. Or he might be dozing by the fire. If she was quiet, she might be able to sneak upstairs, wash and change, and no one would be the wiser.

Pru was quiet. She was exceedingly quiet, but Mr. Higginbotham had been waiting for her, and was ready with a lecture and a preview of the sermon he would give the next morning.

SHE RECOGNIZED THE sermon Sunday when she sat in the first pew, her head facing forward, her gaze never wavering from her guardian as he preached about the Fires of Hell and Eternal Damnation. Pru did not think God would damn her for enjoying a garden he himself had created, and she did wonder if God really valued cleanliness as much as the vicar seemed to believe. She hadn’t argued these points, of course. Her own parents were also deeply religious. In fact, they had left several months ago on a mission trip to the Far East. Having grown up with parents who had given her a similar version of Mr. Higginbotham’s sermon many times, Pru had learned not to argue.

Her questions and comments would only be deemed heretical, and then she would be given an even longer lecture. By the age of eight, Pru had realized there was no common sense to be had in religion. She might try to look at the whole thing logically and reasonably, but this only seemed the path to more