Read Realm 02 - A Touch of Velvet for Free Online Page B

strips of the brown paper. Normally, Bran would rush to assist her, but today, the wait satisfied him. She pulled at the thin muslin cloth wrapped around two ovals. “Look, Papa,” she cried. “It is Aunt Ella.”
    Bran took the miniature, his fingers lovingly tracing the familiar features. “No, Sweetling, it is my mother when she was about Ella’s age. She was so beautiful.” Sonali followed her father’s example and let her little fingers lightly touch the small picture. “What is the other one?” he asked although Bran was reluctant to look away from this rendering.
    “Who is this, Papa?” Sonali handed him a second picture.
    Bran’s eyes fell on the girl he had left behind. He had forever wondered how her looks would change. When Eleanor was with him, he had wanted to ask, but he did not feel he had the right to such musings: He had chosen to take Ashmita as his wife; he had no right to think on anyone else. As he fought his way across the European continent, thoughts of this face’s sweet innocence–that of an elfin twelve-year-old girl–had kept him alive in tight situations. Many times he had chastised himself: No one finds his soul mate at the age of eleven, but Brantley Fowler always believed he had. Velvet Aldridge was but six when a carriage accident took her parents, his mother’s cousin and his wife, and the girl had come to live with them at Thorn Hall. She had annoyed Bran by following him everywhere, even more so than did Ella; but he would often take to task anyone who tried to hurt her. Next to his mother and Ella, he cherished her most dearly.
    Now, in the miniature, he saw it–that same dreamy-eyed stare he had remembered, coal black hair arranged about her face and pulled sleek to expose the long curvature of her neck, and creamy shoulders exposed with the drop of the royal blue gown. Dark brows and lashes crowned the blue-violet eyes he once had loved to see laughing at the absurd things he did to make her happy. The sweet curve of her lips admitting she had found innocence and sensuality both amusing prospects. Bran realized his throat felt parched and his breathing had shallowed. Foolishly, he was feeling passion for the woman in the picture while holding his daughter on his knee. How ridiculous! But the blood continued to rush through his veins, and his heart pounded in his ears. Velvet! Dark and smooth like her name. Staring at the artist’s portrayal of the woman he once knew as a young girl, Bran suddenly realized why he thought Ashmita so beautiful on first sight. Ashmita was what he thought Velvet, as she aged, might resemble–onyx hair and petite figure, but as beautiful as his Ashmita was, her light flickered in the flame known as Velvet.
    “She is my cousin.” His voice sounded constricted even to him. “Her name is Velvet.”
    Sonali had never heard his voice so strained. “Are you well, Papa?”
    “Yes, Sweetheart,” he assured her with a kiss to her cheek. “It has been many years since I last saw my cousin. I did not realize until this moment how much I missed her.”
    *
    Eleanor watched in disgust as her cousin Horton Leighton stuffed another small cake into his mouth. It was, at least, his tenth one. He was in residence at Thorn Hall when she had returned from Cornwall, establishing himself in the neighborhood as the rightful heir in Bran’s absence. Watching him lick his fingers and hearing him smack his lips made her want to scream at the injustice, but she had promised Bran not to betray his whereabouts, and she would never put her brother nor her niece in a position to flee England.
    At age five and forty, Horton Leighton lived the life of the English aristocracy. More than a bit overweight, Leighton rarely walked away from food or drink, and he suffered from gout because of his gluttony and lack of exercise. His jowls jiggled as he spoke, giving the impression of an English bulldog lapping at his water bowl. She watched Leighton’s beady eyes dart about