ROOK AND RAVEN: The Celtic Kingdom Trilogy Book One by Julie Harvey Delcourt Page B

than I can even count.”  David didn’t share that he knew exactly how Sebastian had felt as he himself had been being struck down by love in a single heartbeat.  He had fallen in love with Jessy when he was ten and had gone to live as a ward at Red Winds.  The countess did not approve of what she called ‘bookishness’ in a boy and so he had escaped the house with a copy of Robinson Crusoe and walked until he found a large and shady tree.
    He had just opened to his place in the story when a rather imperious voice above his head had spoken.
    “You are the new boy at Red Winds.”
    He had looked up startled to see a younger girl with long coppery fair hair, bright green eyes and wearing boy’s trousers sitting in the branches above him.  He couldn’t help but think he had found a wood sprite she seemed so elfin and precocious.
    “What are you reading new boy?” she had asked as she promptly swung around and hung upside down by her legs.  Her hair had nearly reached the top of his head.
    “My name is David and I am reading Robinson Crusoe,” he craned his neck to meet her eyes.
    ‘Oh I want to read that one, it sounds like such an adventure!’
    “Well then why don’t you?”
    “I don’t read well enough yet,” she said blithely.
    “Maybe you would if you were with your governess instead of climbing trees,” he had answered rather tartly for it was clear from her speech she was gently born.
    “That is not an adventurous idea at all David the new boy,” she said as she flipped over and landed neatly on the grass next him.  She sat down across from him and crossed her legs like a boy, elbows on her knees and an intent expression on her face.  She had a smudge of tree moss on the end of her nose that exactly matched the green of her eyes and a leaf stuck in her long hair.
    “Read to me,” she demanded.  David fell into love as fast as a rock falling to the bottom of a deep green lake.
    He brought himself back from his memories and focused on what
    Sebastian was saying.
    “Yes, well, being mean didn’t help, trust me.  I couldn’t wait for school to start again and yet agonized about not seeing her for months on end.  I just hoped whatever insanity possessed me would fly off by Christmas.  I was so angry at her for being her; for being funny and beautiful and fearless.  I hated her for making me love her and even think about something as serious as marriage.  I had a grand plan of being the greatest rake of the age, of cutting a swath in London for years.  I could see it all falling apart and me in parson’s mousetrap by the grand age of twenty two at best.”
    “Oh your mother wasn’t going to let that happen!  I do remember thinking that school year that I hated you and the term would in murder,” David mused.  “You have a way about you that brings murder to mind more often than it should.”
    “Really?” Sebastian hid a grim smile as David did not yet know half of it when it came to people wanting to kill him, or him killing other people for that matter.
    “Well good God man you rolled with every skirt within a mile of Cambridge that year!  I recall you were almost sent down for getting caught with Master Tidwell’s niece and she was only visiting!  I still have nightmares about climbing down that wall with you and playing look out.  I fantasized about Jess finding out what a despicable rake you were and falling into my arms.  The reality of that not happening occurred to me about every other week.  It was always you.  She told me when she was nine and you rescued her kitten Marlowe from the south fountain that she was going to marry you.”
    “She did?” Sebastian was momentarily disconcerted. “I was determined to shake off whatever she had done to me.  Didn’t work,” he shook his head slowly.
    “And that is why you still live Sebastian St. Just.  I knew what you were doing and was also pretty sure it wasn’t a bad thing to get it all out of your system.  So I