Read The Cross of Love for Free Online Page B

aghast. "It's you."
    "Certainly it's me. Kindly rise, sir."
    "Of course, of course." He hastily sprang to his feet and reached down to help her up.
    "Do you normally attack people who enter your home?" she demanded. She was breathless from the fight, and from strange sensations that were coursing around her body.
    "Only the ones who come by night and don't ring the doorbell," he said promptly. "To be honest, I thought you were the ghost."
    "Really!"
    "Truly, I did. I heard a noise from down here and came to investigate. Then I heard ghostly footsteps coming along the passage, and then some creature came through the door, holding something under her arm. So naturally I thought you were carrying your head."
    "I beg your pardon!"
    "You were carrying something under your arm, so I thought it was your head. Headless Lady, you know."
    "It was not my head," Rena said with awful dignity. "It was a chicken."
    "A chicken? Yes - well, I quite see that that explains everything."
    Her lips twitched. "You are absurd," she said.
    "I beg your pardon, madam! You glide about the house at midnight, carrying a chicken under your arm, and I am absurd?"
    "I can explain the chicken."
    "Please don't," he begged, beginning to laugh. "I think I'd prefer it to remain a mystery."
    "Whatever Your Lordship pleases," she said, beginning to dust herself down.
    "Don't you think, after this, that you might bring yourself to call me John?"
    "Yes, I do. And I'm Rena. And the chicken is Clara. She lays excellent eggs, as you will find."
    "I'm moved by this concern for my appetite, but I assure you tomorrow would have been soon enough."
    "Yes, but I - oh heavens!" she said, as the evening's events came back to her.
    "My dear girl, whatever has happened? I can't see your face properly, but I can tell you're very depressed. No, don't answer now. Let us go into the kitchen and have some tea, and you can tell me all about it."
    His kindly concern was balm to her soul. In the kitchen she relit the lamp and he made her sit down on the old oak settle by the stove while he boiled the kettle. She told him the whole story of her arrival at the vicarage, her discovery of the family, and her battle with them.
    "I behaved terribly," she said, shocked at herself.
    "It sounds to me as though you behaved very sensibly," he said, handing her a cup of tea, and sitting down beside her. "They may not be a den of thieves exactly, but they're certainly a nest of bullies. And the only thing to do with bullies is stand up to them."
    "Well, that's what I think too," she said, delighted to find a kindred spirit. "And yet - oh, goodness, if you could have heard the things I said to them."
    "I wish I had. I'm sure it would have been very entertaining."
    "Oh no, I'm sure that's wrong," she said, conscience stricken. "How can a fight be entertaining."
    "Very easily if you have righteousness on your side. Nothing like a good fight. Engage the enemy and turn your ten-pounders on him."
    "Ten-pounders?"
    "Guns."
    "They said - " her voice began to shake from another reason, "they said they'd tell the constable that Clara was parish property, and I said - " mirth was overcoming her, "I said - "
    "Don't stop there," he begged. "I can't stand it."
    "I said he would take my side because - he'd met this chicken before."
    His crack of laughter hit the ceiling. Rena gave up the struggle not to yield to her amusement, and the two of them sat there, holding onto each other and rocking back and forth.
    "That's not a ten-pounder, that's a twelve-pounder," he gasped at last. "It must have blown them out of the water. I shall always regret that I wasn't there.
    "I ought to have been, of course. I should have walked back to the vicarage with you, and then I would have been there to help. When I think of you struggling back here - and what do you mean by creeping in by stealth?"
    "I thought you would still be at the tavern, and the house would be empty."
    "No, I didn't stay long. I began to feel rather