Free Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) by Jennifer Blake

her a lovely sense of freedom.
    Leaving the store, Violet strolled along the street with no particular destination, simply enjoying the outing. She paused at a window display of souvenirs of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition, which had been held three years before, among which were cunning little boxes made of glass to represent the marvelous Crystal Palace and a brass trotting sulky like the one that had been exhibited by the United States. Entering a bookseller’s shop to browse, she was tempted by an old hand-bound and beautifully illustrated booklet of William Blake’s poems, but she came away without it. She had walked some distance when the sky began to darken and a dull rumble of thunder sounded overhead.
    The parasol she carried had been designed to protect against the hot Louisiana sun rather than English rain. Its fringed silk was not only woefully thin, but was inadequate to cover the full spread of her gown over its crinoline. Violet looked around her for a hackney carriage, but there was none to be seen that was not already occupied. The native Londoners had been much quicker to note the change of weather than had she.
    A chill wind blew up the street. It swayed her green silk skirts around her and swirled her sash of Balmoral plaid and also the matching plaid ribbons on her small jade velvet hat tipped forward on her high-dressed curls. She turned this way and that, in search of cover. A short distance away, across the street, was the arched marble gateway to a small park. There were great chestnut trees inside in full bloom with clumps of rhododendron under them that were footed by massed wallflowers. In the center was a cast-iron pavilion framed by the twisted trunks of ginkgo trees.
    As the first spotting drops of rain began to fall, Violet put up her parasol, then lifted her skirts and stepped from the sidewalk into the street. Holding the flimsy sunshade before her to protect her face from the wind, with its freight of coal dust and bits of blowing straw from horse bags, she ran for the far side.
    There came the clatter of hooves, followed by the shrill neighing of a horse and the agonizing squeal of a handbrake. A man shouted a curse and a whip snapped. Violet jerked her parasol aside to see a hackney looming down on her. The bewhiskered driver hauled on the reins while a powerful gray stallion reared up, almost on top of her.
    Abruptly, an arm like an iron shackle fastened upon her waist. Her head whirled dizzily as she was half lifted, half dragged to the curb. The iron wheels of the hackney carriage passed inches away and she was buffeted by the wind of its passage. The curses of the driver floated back on the wind, mingling with the irate shouts of the gentleman passenger hanging out the window.
    Between the hard grasp of the man’s arm about her and the biting grip of her own corsets, Violet could not breathe. Shivering with reaction, her chest heaving as she tried to draw air into her constricted lungs, she stared with misted eyes at the cravat of the man who held her. The insignia on the gold pin that secured it, and the delicate fern design of his waistcoat into which it was tucked, did a crazed dance before her; still, she felt their patterns would be imprinted on her mind forever. When she was certain she was not going to faint from shortness of breath, she slowly lifted her gaze.
    His eyes, that was what she saw first. They were so clear and kind and warm in spite of their crystalline blue-gray color. Set so the corners were turned down slightly, they were shaded by straight brows and edged by lashes so thick they gave him a secretive air. His cheekbones had a Slavic prominence on either side of a straight Roman nose. His jawline was square, and though his mouth was strongly molded, there was gentleness about its curves and smooth surfaces. He had lost his hat in the brief skirmish, and his close-cropped hair curled in wild, russet-brown disarray with the dampness and wind.
    Violet, searching