A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones Read Online Free PDF Page B

soothing. Perhaps because as long as he was
talking to her, she couldn’t be dead.
    The carriage gained speed, swaying dangerously as the driver took the
horses into a full-out gallop. They’d left the traffic behind for open road.
    “I’m going to release you now,” he said. “I trust you won’t do
something silly like try to fling yourself out of the carriage at this speed.”
    If she was right, and they’d left the main roads behind, there’d be no
one to hear her scream for help either. Lily had more pressing matters to worry
about anyway.
    Lord Adair slid her from his lap and she immediately scooted to the
furthest corner of the seat.
    She flicked aside the curtain to peer outside. “Where are you taking
me?”
    He didn’t answer.
    Cultivated fields stretched out to the right as far as the eye could
see. If she craned her neck, she could just make out the beginnings of a clump
of trees straight ahead. She recognised the densely wooded common. “We’re
approaching Clapham Common.”
    She glanced across to find him staring out of his window.
    In profile, silky brown hair stroked the hollow below his cheekbone
and his clenched jaw formed a rigid line. His trousers were a dark grey,
matched with a waistcoat worn over a crisp white shirt. Broad shoulders filled
a meticulously tailored jacket that was left unbuttoned. He’d crossed one leg
over the other and rested an elbow on the door ledge.
    He looked every inch the well-groomed gentleman who’d been admitted to
Lady Cheshire’s Mummy ball.
    Every inch the heart-stopping Lord Dashing.
    Her gaze settled on the ruined neck cloth and loose ties hanging down
his front. A blush heated her throat as she recalled the unfamiliar hardness of
lean muscle and his particular scent of pine forest and ash and something
altogether male. She’d danced her share of waltzes, but this took intimacy to
an entirely new extreme.
    He brought his attention from outside to meet her brazen stare with a
quirked brow. “At least you haven’t leapt to your death yet.”
    The heat drained from her skin. Lily lowered her eyes, clasping her
fingers in her lap to hide the trembling.
    I’m not dead.
    She couldn’t be. Not when life still felt so real. The only other
explanation lay with the troublesome spells she’d suffered from since her
mother’s death.
    Neither Lily nor her aunt, nor Dr. Ragon for that matter, had
suspected her recurring spells to be anything other than flashes from an
overactive, traumatised imagination. Usually the place was familiar, often
she’d recognise faces, but Lily herself had always only ever been an observer,
disconnected and unaffected.
    This time she remembered every vivid detail with the intensity of
someone who’d lived through the action, the emotion. She knew what it felt like
to have her neck snapped, to draw that last ragged breath, to slip away into
the beyond.
    She lifted her gaze to him. “What do you want with me, Lord Adair?”
    The ghost of that exact question, asked as she’d served him tea in her
drawing room, answered. I knew Lady d’Bulier. Lily held her breath.
    Lord Adair grimaced. “I knew your mother, Lady d’Bulier.”
    She let that breath out on a trembling sigh. “You mentioned something
about keeping me safe. From what?”
    In response, he half-rose and rapped hard up against the roof with his
fist. A moment later, the carriage drew to a halt in a clearing alongside the
road.
    Lily’s hand quickly went to the door handle on her side. She
hesitated. There was no urge to run for her life. She was more afraid of her
memories, of what might or might not be real, than of Lord Adair.
    When Lord Adair alighted and offered her a hand, she shifted along the
seat and allowed him to help her out. Neither of them wore gloves. Skin touched
skin as she stepped from the carriage.
    One more intimate social transgression; she was beginning to lose
count.
    She slid her hand from his as soon as her feet touched the ground. Her
slippers