Free Taming Beauty by Lynne Barron Page A

a mind to own from this one little shop,” Lilith said, not bothering to hide her wonder. “No traipsing to one shop for table linens, another for candles and still another for… Is that a ready-made gown on that dressmaker’s mannequin in the back?”
    From somewhere across the river and behind them, a bell tolled.
    “Damn, we’re going to be late,” he murmured, his hand wrapping around her wrist as if he meant to bodily tug her away from the wondrous shop.
    Only he didn’t tug at all, but rather slid his hand down and brushed his fingertips over the back of her hand, traced the knobby ridges of her knuckles once, twice. His thumb coasted over the sensitive skin on the underside of her wrist where her pulse throbbed, echoing the thunderous beat of her heart.
    Lord, his hand was so big and warm, his touch unbearably gentle.
    Then both were gone as he released her wrist as suddenly as he’d taken hold of it. “We’ve only nine more tolls of the bell before the church doors close.”
    Following him when he turned away, she trailed him across the bridge and back the way they’d come on the other side of the river. Every dozen steps or so he paused and glanced back, waiting until she’d nearly caught up with him, before moving off again. Just out of reach.
    He turned off the lane onto a narrow path bordered by high, stone walls. The echo of the ninth toll faded away into a silence broken only by the surge of the river, the occasional bird chirping and from a great distance away the frenzied barking of a dog.
    Lilith felt rather like Lord Malleville’s shadow, always there but rarely acknowledged. It was a melancholy thought and deeply troubling as it smacked of self-pity and she refused to feel such a useless emotion.
    When he disappeared beneath an ivy covered archway, she was tempted to turn around and retrace her steps to the inn where Reggie waited with Dunaway’s carriage. She could retrieve the missive from Mr. Poole and be back at Breckenridge inside of an hour, pack up her belongings and be on the road to London inside of three.
    Malleville ought not to have laid his hand on her, not in so gentle a fashion. The touch had scattered her wits and she’d yet to collect them enough to remember why it was so imperative she stop a wedding that would, in all likelihood, result in a marriage no better or worse than any other alliance forged by financial and societal considerations.
    Lilith trailed one hand through the ivy as she turned under the arch, stopping on the edge of a vast field of daffodils. It was as if the sun had exploded, showering the meadow with bursts of yellow light, so bright she had no choice but to look away lest she be rendered blind.
    The church itself was ancient, weathered gray stones of indiscriminate size all piled atop one another like a jigsaw puzzle designed to addle the mind of anyone foolish enough to attempt to solve it. A three-story, crenellated tower dwarfed the chapel, the old, wood-plank doors shut though the windows on either side had been left open in light of the heat already climbing though it was only mid-morning.
    From those open windows, dozens of voiced raised in song floated across the churchyard, carried on the same breeze which set thousands of daffodils swaying and shimmying.
    Lilith wasn’t prone to whimsical notions, but it seemed to her as if the flowers were dancing to the melody of all those Cornish voices raised to belt out an unfamiliar hymn.
    Smiling, she looked about for Malleville and found him wandering between the headstones of a graveyard situated to the left and a bit behind the church. Taking a twisting path through the daffodils, she entered the cemetery and wound her way through the tombstones until she came up beside him.
    “Do you suppose one must be a member of this church in order to be buried here?” Lilith asked. “Or would Reverend Hopper allow anyone to be laid to rest in his churchyard for the right price?”
    “As he’s a man of God,