Free Again, My Lord: A Twist Series Novel by Katharine Ashe

detail of life in Swinly wrong.
    Pushing the covers away, she set her feet on the cold floor. Then she saw it.
    Across the room, atop the dressing table, the Goddess of Love’s pale white face stared at her with blank eyes as the drumming of rainfall outside filled Calista’s ears.

 
     

Chapter Six
    Lady Holland left the inn without speaking to or looking at anyone, and without opening an umbrella or donning a bonnet against the rain. Eyes blank, she looked like she had seen a ghost.
    Tacitus had seen a sleepwalking person once with eyes like that, fixed in some invisible place that was part of the dream. Given the flooding, if she were sleepwalking someone needed to watch her to ensure that she did not accidentally drown herself. When through the window he saw her turn toward the high street, he abandoned his coffee, grabbed his greatcoat and hat, and went after her.
    He remained at a distance. If a woman wanted to walk around in the rain, he didn’t have any business spying on her.
Or getting caught spying on her
.
    She walked all the way to the ford without once breaking stride or turning her head. Her cloak, sodden and dragging in the mud, clung to her arms and hips, defining her curves decadently. Motherhood had only improved her figure, giving a pleasing roundness to her slender shape.
    Slowing his steps as she approached the ford, he watched her halt before the roiling water, and held himself in check from going forward. If in a sleeping daze she waded in, he was close enough to run and grab her from it.
    Still, he felt like a voyeur watching her now. It was true, of course, that he had never really been able to help himself from watching Calista Chance. He had followed her even then, six years ago, from party to party in London, from London to her family’s estate, and then around the countryside for an entire month, driving her and her siblings about, walking through woods and ruins and every village within miles, as the Earl of Chance’s offspring sought amusement away from their house.
    Just as then, he was captivated now. Calista Chance could be soaked in rain, with mud up to her ankles, shadows beneath her eyes, and lines creasing her brow, and he would still be captivated. Even a sharp word on her tongue like the night before when she had called him peculiar could not quell his interest. It was his sorry fate, he supposed, to find her more compelling than any other woman he had ever met.
    Abruptly she pivoted away from the ford and her eyes came to him. As he was the only thing in the road, it wasn’t to be wondered at. She moved toward him, and he met her in the rain.
    “Good day, my lady,” he said with perfect inanity.
    Upon a gust of wind, the rain canted to the side, slanting down between them.
    “I realize it was a mistake to kiss you like that,” she said. “But you needn’t worry. I won’t do it again.”
    Rain dripped off the tip of his nose. “I beg your pardon?”
    “How often do you say that? ‘I beg your pardon?’ Or do you say it only to me?”
    “I beg—” He coughed. “That is, may I escort you back to the inn? I don’t believe you have taken breakfast yet, and you must wish to change out of those wet clothes.”
    “I haven’t any other clothes with me. There, I have said it. I have no other clothing and no money. I cannot afford both breakfast and dinner today, my lord.”
    Something in his stomach tightened. No
money
? The sister of an earl?
    “Allow me to treat you to breakfast. But not until you have changed out of those wet garments, I think.” He offered his arm, both hoping and dreading that she would accept it and after six years of drought he would again drink of the madness of her touch.
    Her lovely brow furrowed and her crystal blue eyes seemed to glitter behind the curtain of rain.
    “You don’t remember that I kissed you, do you?”
    Tacitus was fairly certain that if this woman had ever kissed him, he would not only remember it, he would very possibly