Read Resurrection for Free Online Page B

a finger to her lips and waited, as though she had to come from a great distance to admit him.
    His smile was utterly disarming, and he carried a nosegay of wild violets and buttercups in one hand. Emmeline stared at Gil, hardly able to credit, even now, that he was back.
    Izannah finally nudged her. “Good evening, Mr. Hartwell,” the girl said cheerfully. “Won’t you come in?”
    “Thank you,” Gil replied easily, and stepped past Emmeline. He offered the nosegay and she accepted it, blushing with shy pleasure, then excusing herself, in stumbling words, to go into the kitchen and put the tiny bouquet in water.
    When she returned to the front of the house, Gil and Izannah were in the parlor. The girl sat at the piano, waiting for an invitation to play, while Gil stood beside the polished instrument, smiling down at her. Emmeline felt a surge of jealousy and was instantly ashamed. Izannah was a shameless flirt—she’d batted her lashes and flashed her dimples at Mr. Montgomery many a time—but she was only seventeen, after all, a mere child.
    “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind favoring us with a song,” Emmeline said to her cousin, to make up for uncharitable thoughts. “Izannah is my most promising student.”
    There was a smile in Gil’s eyes as he looked at Emmeline.
    “I’m going to make some man a wonderful wife,” Izannah chirped.
    Gil didn’t laugh at this announcement, and Emmeline would be forever grateful.
    “I should think you’d want to make some sort of life for yourself first,” she pointed out mildly, though her first instinct was to grab the girl by the throat and throttle her. Emmeline met Gil’s eyes as Izannah began to play a Mozart sonata. “We have relations in the East,” she said, as if he didn’t know all about them. “Our great-aunt Margaret has offered to take Izannah to Europe next spring.”
    “It wouldn’t be half so interesting as Plentiful,” Izannah chimed, over the delicate notes of her favorite recital piece. She turned that dazzling, dimpled smile on Gil. “What would you have done if you’d come back and found Emmeline married to Mr. Montgomery?”
    Gil took the little imp’s hand, lifted it from the keyboard, and kissed it lightly. “That’s easy,” he replied smoothly. “I’d have turned right around and courted you, Miss Izannah.”

3
    W ILL YOU BE IN CHURCH TOMORROW ?” E MMELINE ASKED AT THE end of the evening as she said good-bye to Mr. Hartwell on the front veranda. Even though the steps were hidden by climbing roses on one side and a lilac bush on the other, she wouldn’t have dared to do or say anything untoward. The neighbors were simply too vigilant, and there was enough gossip going around as it was.
    Gil stood with his hat in his hand and one foot on the bottom step, looking up at her. “Just think how disappointed folks would be if I didn’t turn up,” he said, and his mouth tilted upward at the corners in the slightest of grins. “I don’t have the heart to let them down.”
    Overhead, a canopy of stars glinted, undimmed by the feeble glow of light that was Plentiful. There was a weighted feeling in the air, as if a violent storm was coming, and yet the warm breeze promised a hot day tomorrow. Emmeline wanted to ask if Gil was sleeping inside the cabin, with itsgaping roof, but she didn’t dare raise such a subject with Mrs. Dunlap surely bending so far over the garden fence that she might impale herself on the pickets. The old meddler was bound to be taking in every word.
    “Well, good night then,” Emmeline said clearly, so her neighbors would know Gil had gone home directly after supper.
    Gil reached out, took her hand, and brushed his lips across her knuckles in a feather-light kiss that left Emmeline trembling. “Good night, Miss Emmeline,” he said, with equal clarity, and turned to stroll, whistling, toward the open gate at the end of the limestone walk. His mule and buckboard awaited on the other side of the fence.
    It was