Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection)

Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Bride of a Stranger (Classic Gothics Collection) Read Online Free PDF
Author: Jennifer Blake
Tags: Romance
know that love often begins that way?” she said, forcing a light laugh.
    “Fickle, that’s what you are.” His face relaxed. “A cruel jade, leading men on. I should count myself lucky to have escaped from your toils.”
    “Indeed you should. I would have led you a merry dance, always reminding you that we are of an age and interfering in your affairs. But, of course, if you prefer to arrive in Paris posing as a young man with a broken heart to make yourself interesting, I have no objection to being the villainess in the piece!”
    He grinned. “A tongue like an adder! You will be lucky if Justin doesn’t break your neck for you if you give him any of your fine parole .”
    “Yes—” she answered, but the smile curving her lips did not reach her eyes.
    Her wedding day dawned with thunder. It was so dark in the room that Zaza, her maid, had to light the night candle standing on the commode table before she brought the coffee tray to her bedside. Half-way through her breakfast it began to rain, a slashing downpour that rattled on the roof and beat against the great leaves of the banana tree in the courtyard outside her bedroom window. It was still raining, though at a more gentle tempo, in the afternoon, when the hairdresser was shown into her room.
    The woman, Madame Elspeth, was a mulatto of middle age, with dark piercing eyes, and with her hair decently covered by a madras tignon . She carried the tools of her trade about with her in the pockets of a voluminous overall apron, and at once commandeered the dressing table and began to lay her tongs, pomade, heating frame, pins, and pot of lacquer out upon it. The heating frame was unfolded and set up over a candle, then the tongs were placed upon it. Claire was urged forward to the chair before the mirror with profuse compliments on the beauty of her abundant, freshly washed hair, a linen towel was placed over her shoulders, and the ordeal began.
    First her hair was parted in the center and then drawn back to the crown of her head. Small curls were snipped short at the temples and cheeks and deftly curled with the tongs, then touched with just a suspicion of lacquer. The extra length of her hair was formed into a chignon at the crown, with the free ends being formed with the tongs into masses of shining ringlets that fell down the back of her head. A crown of orange blossoms was then carefully placed on the coiffure with a few of the curls gently teased forward to curl artlessly around it.
    “ C’est magnifique! ” the hairdresser exclaimed, stepping back and clasping her hands in ecstasy.
    “Most becoming,” her aunt said grudgingly, a little frown touching her forehead as she surveyed the hectic flush that glowed on Claire’s cheeks. “Take care that you do nothing to disturb it. Madame Elspeth must come to me now, and it still lacks an hour or more before time to begin dressing. You might occupy yourself in the meantime with over-seeing the packing of your bandboxes. They have been left to last. Monsieur Leroux has requested that they be placed with your trunk on the traveling coach as soon as it arrives.”
    “Yes, of course,” Claire answered, slipping the towel from about her neck and rising to her feet. Her hats and veils were all that was left in the great armoire that took up one wall of her room, except for her wedding gown. She moved to open the great doors of the armoire and lift the hats down while the hairdresser gathered up her tools and her aunt waited impatiently with her hand on the door knob.
    “Ah,” the hairdresser said as the door swung open, “the wedding ensemble. May I not see?” She glided forward to stand beside Claire.
    The gown was of white silk muslin with small puff sleeves and a low scooped décolleté rising at the back of the neck to a finely pleated standing ruff. The skirt, falling from the empire waistline, had several gauze-like layers. It was full in the back with a demi-train. The hem was edged with a deep frill of
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