Free The Bride of Time by Dawn Thompson Page B

avenues leading back and forth in time. Tessa had never credited anything but the existence of lay lines themselves as more than superstition…until now.
    She had passed several churches on the way. Were any of them St. Michael’s? Tessa couldn’t remember. All she recalled was their spires and square bell towers shrouded in the fog. Lay lines? Everyone knew they existed, but to credit them with such as this! Could the superstitions be true? What other explanation could there be? There was no use to puzzle over it. She was here and that was that. The whys and wherefores were the mystery of the Fates.
    Tessa took a nightdress from the chiffonier, lifted the candle branch and went into the dressing room. Since she wasn’t privileged to have the services of a lady’s maid, Dorcas had selected frocks that were easily donned and didn’t require a corset that laced in back. She was grateful for that, wriggling out of the gown, and equally grateful that the nightdress of butter-soft lawn slipped over her head just as easily. It was very finely made, hand-stitched, and sheer. Tessa had never seen anything so delicate, much less felt the like against her skin. She’d known nothing but homespun, and on occasion muslin.

    Sitting at the vanity, she took the three tortoiseshell hairpins from her Gibson coiffure and set them on the vanity top in a neat row. A shake of her head and the long curtain of mahogany hair the pins had tethered fell about her shoulders in a cascade of silken waves to her buttocks. There was a brush on the vanity with silver repoussé roses on the back and handle, and she took it up and began brushing her hair. There was a matching comb, and a pink glass hair receiver also; she laughed at the latter. She had no need of hairpieces to feed into it at the end of the day through the little hole in the silver lid. Her hair was voluminous enough without such.
    She pulled the length of it in front over her shoulder, and began brushing from the scalp to the ends; long, rhythmic strokes. How soothing it was with such a fine brush. A soft moan escaped her, and she shut her eyes, basking in the sheer pleasure of the task. When they fluttered open again, she froze in place, her shuddering stare riveted to the mirror, where another image glared back at her.
    Tessa vaulted to her feet. “Master Monty!” she breathed. “What are you doing here?” She snatched her wrapper, which was draped over the chair, and shrugged it on. “Do you know what time it is, young man? The whole house is in an uproar looking for you.”
    “You told Uncle,” the boy said.
    “I had no choice,” Tessa returned. “You gave me none.”
    “You are not afraid of me,” the boy said, marveling.
    “No, Master Monty, I am not.”
    “You should be, you know, and you will be. Uncle is.”
    “Your uncle does not impress me as someone who frightens easily, Master Monty.” The boy giggled, and the sound ran her through like a javelin. She added steadily, “You haven’t told me what you are doing here. These are my rooms. You do not belong here.”

    The boy shrugged. It seemed his favorite mannerism. “ None of the rooms are ‘your rooms,’” the boy snapped. “Now you know that!” Giggling again, he darted past Tessa, flipping the vanity chair over in her path, and ran through the rooms to the sitting room door, where he threw open the bolt and burst out into the corridor.
    Slowed for righting the toppled chair, Tessa entered the hallway in time to see the boy skip over the landing, fly down the stairs and disappear in the shadows of the second-floor east wing corridor below. In close pursuit, she rushed down the stairs…and ran right into the arms of Giles Longworth, approaching from the opposite direction. The impact of her soft flesh against his hard-muscled body caught the breath in her throat. Her breasts flattened against his chest became hard, traitorous things, her nipples tightened to turgid buds pressed up against him