Mercy for the Patriots

Chapter Four: I Won't Let You Fall Part I

Books had always comforted me more than anything else. Those heavy tomes of knowledge and wonder was the perfect for escape or entrance to anything. So when I felt a crush growing towards the handsome, flirty, General Lafayette, the library was the first place I turned to.

My uncle Ford was never an extreme intellectual, and his potful collection of books showed that. He had all the volumes expected of a proper gentlemen— Locke, Shakespeare— everything I had already mastered years ago. After a quarter of an hour searching in vain in the frigid, eerily quiet room, my eyes caught sight of an extremely thick copy of Col. Napiers Peninsula Wars.

"Something worth reading in this impoverished hole?" I growled. "About time."

I looked above at the book. It was on the very top shelf, one which, even when standing on my tiptoes, my finger only brushed the wooden board it sat on. With even more difficulty I found a small stool and carried it to sit beneath the book. Stepping carefully on the cracked wood, I lifted my hands and grabbed the heavy volume. As I pulled it down, my arms shaking with the effort, there was a voice.

"Can I be of any help?"

The sound was so sudden in the whisper less library that I shrieked and pulled myself backwards. Two things happened. The book flipped from my hands, and fell fast to the ground, landing with a heavy thump and cloud of dust. I titled on my stool, and feeling it's legs slip out from underneath me, winced and prepared for the painful crash to the ground.

But I never made it to the ground.

A large, strong person caught me around the middle and hugged me close to their chest. Delicately they lowered me to the ground, where I was able to look at who had surprised me, then caught me.

"Why does it have to be you?" I exclaimed, then slapped a hand to my mouth in horror. "I-I-I mean..."

General Lafayette's twinkling light blue eyes focused on me, stopping my stammers. "I am sorry for surprising you," he said. "I just wanted to see if you needed any help with getting that book down from the shelf."

"I didn't," I said bluntly, and spun on one foot to pick up the heavy tome, never minding about how rude I was being. I had thought the library was my one spot to escape the handsome Frenchman, yet he had followed me even here.

Lafayette placed a hand on my shoulder. "I apologize for catching you," he said cooly. "I just didn't want you to fall."

As he turned and walked away I felt tempted to apologize or to ask for forgiveness. But I didn't, because I was determined not to fall.

Not to fall in love with him.