The Bride of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

screamed.

    “Let me go at once or I’ll bring this house down!” she shrilled.
    “Not before I get my blunt’s worth!” he said, fumbling with the neck of her frock. “How do you get shot of this deuced thing?”
    “I’m no Penzance roundheels!” she cried, swatting his hand away. He winced when the blow grazed the scar near his wrist, but her anger was such that she could not raise an ounce of compassion. “Oh yes, I’ve heard all about the harlots you Cornish have out this way,” she went on. “They put Whitechapel unfortunates to shame. It was one of those trollops that left here naked in your coach just now, wasn’t it? Well, I am no such creature. I’ve been trying to tell you there’s been a mistake. Let me go! You will not get me into that bed, sir!”
    He froze as if she’d struck him, his gaze a study in confusion. His hand fell away from her Brussels lace collar. He’d managed to free four of the tiny buttons that had challenged his thick fingers, exposing the notch at the base of her throat.
    “Bed,” he murmured. “You think…?” Seizing her arm, he propelled her toward the easel and spun her around to face the canvas. Tessa swayed in his arms. With the strange happenings of late, she’d all but forgotten. Here was “The Bride of Time” in the early stages of completion. “That slag wasn’t here for bed sport; she was my model,” he told her. “Didn’t Andy explain?”
    “I have been trying to tell you. Your coachman even tried to tell you. I never saw your ‘Andy’ person—”
    “Who are you then?” Longworth asked, raking his dark hair back from a sweaty brow. “What were you doing in my coach?” She almost felt sorry for him then…almost, but not quite. He was still a brute and a madman, and she was still at his mercy.

    “M-my name is Tessa LaPrelle,” she said, ordering her frock. “I…I’ve come about…about the governess position.” What else could she say? What other excuse could she give him? She should run, and keep on running. But where would she run to? She wasn’t even in her own time. How could that have happened? How could she get back to London in her own day and age? Did she even want to, what with a charge of theft hanging over her head? But how could she stay here with him , with this wild-eyed drunken madman? There was a connection, there had to be. She was here, wasn’t she? For all that the situation was passing strange, and considering her mundane existence in her own time, she was brave enough to want to find out why the fates had cast her adrift in a blink of time’s eye.
    Longworth let her go, muttering a string of expletives. “I do beg your pardon,” he said, sketching an awkward bow. “You should have said something!”
    “I tried,” Tessa pronounced, fastening the buttons on her bodice.
    Longworth straightened up, fussing with his shirtsleeves. He seemed to be trying to cover the scar on the back of his wrist with the lace ruffled cuff. “I know it’s no excuse, of course,” he said, “but I’m half-castaway, or I never would have given you such a clumsy welcome to Longhollow Abbey. Brandy has an odd effect upon me, I’m afraid. I assure you that in normal circumstances I am a gentleman.”
    “ Clumsy? ” Tessa blurted. “That does not even approach the description of my ‘welcome,’ sir. Tell me: do you imbibe often, then?”
    “Only when needs must, dear lady.”
    Tessa extended her hand. “My hairpins, please,” she said icily.
    He lurched as if she’d struck him, reached into hispocket and produced the pins. “Frightfully sorry,” he said. “You must think me a jackanapes.”
    “Mmmm,” Tessa said, taking hold of her long, thick hair.
    Longworth’s hand shot out and stopped just short of making contact. “Oh, please don’t,” he said. “It’s perfect as it is.”
    “It’s highly inappropriate as it is, sir,” Tessa snapped, coiling her hair into a Gibson crown—no small feat without a mirror, but