Stormswept by Sabrina Jeffries

commands had always angered her. Perhaps that was her impure blood, too, making her want to fight instead of bow her head and take her medicine as Mama said a lady should.
    After Mama slipped out the door, Juliana got up and wandered to the window. Feeling hemmed in, she opened it and rested her arms on the sill.
    Now when her family talked about the Welsh as if they were odd creatures, she would know why she didn’t agree. Why she found Welsh stories about heroic conquests much more exciting than the English lady’s manuals Mama made her read. She had impure blood.
    She didn’t mind hearing that she was flawed. Ladies with impure blood seemed to have all the fun.
    Suddenly, she heard a rustling in the oak that grew near her window. A form appeared on the branch a couple of feet above, and she opened her mouth to scream. Then the figure said, “It’s me, Rhys.”
    “Mr. Vaughan? Good Lord! What are you doing?”
    Now she could see his face. “Coming in to talk to you.”
    Then before she could react, he dropped to hang from the branch. “Move away from the window, my lady.”
    It was either do as he said or watch him fall. With her heart in her throat, she got out of the way as he beganswinging back and forth until he veered close enough to hook his feet over the sill.
    “You fool! ” she hissed and hurried forward to help him climb inside. “If you’d fallen, you might have been killed! ”
    He dusted off his breeches, then turned a gleaming gaze on her. “Are you so worried for me, then?” Grinning, he strode across the room to latch her door.
    Dear heaven, she’d welcomed a man into her bedchamber and let him lock them in together. This wouldn’t do at all. “You shouldn’t be here.”
    “I know. I told myself I should stay clear of you and your family. But I had to find out if you survived your caning.” Taking off his coat, he tossed it across a chair. “When I glanced through the windows downstairs and didn’t see you with your family in the drawing room, I started circling the house, searching for a way in. That’s when I spotted you, looking like an angel in white.”
    The compliment softened her. A little. “Well, you must go. Someone might find you here, and I’ll be in even more trouble than I already am.”
    He winced. “Was the caning too very awful?”
    She shook her head. “As I’d hoped, Papa changed his mind about it after Mama talked to him. But I’m not allowed to leave my room for two weeks.” Her stomach growled. “And I was sent up without dinner.”
    His eyes darkened. “I’m sorry for getting you into trouble.”
    She shrugged. “It’s done now. No use crying over it.”
    “But at least I can help enliven your confinement.”
    “Oh, no, you can’t stay ,” she cried as he drew a parcel from his coat pocket. “Mama might—”
    “I brought you a gift. As a sort of apology.”
    That stunned her into silence.
    He thrust the parcel at her. “I should have brought you bread, I suppose, but no gift can really make up for the trouble I got you in.”
    “No . . . I mean . . .” She took it from him with a tremulous smile. “I can’t believe you brought me a present.”
    When she unknotted the string around the parcel, the burlap wrapping fell away to reveal a book. She caught her breath at the title— Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru . Which meant, in English, The Masterpieces of the Welsh Poets .
    “There’s no Huw Morus,” Mr. Vaughan said, “but it has poems by Taliesin and Dafydd ap Gwilym—”
    “It’s delightful! ” She lifted her gaze to him. “ ’Tis the most wonderful present anyone has ever given me.”
    He let out his breath. “You like it.”
    “How could I not?” She caressed the leather-bound volume. “I have lots of Welsh history books, but only pieces of Welsh poetry transcribed for me by our servants from their own small collections. I’ve never had a whole book of poems to myself.”
    He smiled. “That’s because there are