Penny Shelbourne. The voice was Penny Shelbourne’s. She said something about the view to be had from such a vantage point. Elaine’s first instinct was to jump up and say How do you do? and indeed the view is quite spectacular, but when she opened her mouth what came out was a breath catching, “Ow!” Her right leg had gone to sleep. Her right foot did not seem to be connected to her leg at all, and her left foot had no feeling whatsoever until she moved it, a wooden limb. A pang shot the length of both legs when she moved them, all pins and needles. How long did I sleep? And then her whole body seemed for a moment to go to sleep, to sink lower in the shadows that stretched out to wrap her. Valentine Wharton topped the lip of Tomen Bala. No mistaking his silhouette against the sinking sun, golden hair gleaming, backlit, his shoulders, his torso, his horseman’s thighs grown familiar--even beloved. Elaine had to admit she loved him in that moment, in the twinge of jealousy she felt in watching him extend a helping hand to another woman--the hand whose glancing touch she had grown to treasure.
