9 - Once Upon a Betrothal: Scandalous Seasons by Christi Caldwell

Author:Christi Caldwell [Caldwell, Christi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Scandalous Seasons#9
Publisher: Christi Caldwell
Published: 2023-12-08T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

As Aunt Hester’s carriage bounced along the uneven roads, carrying Elyse on the last leg of her journey, Elyse stared out her window at the cloudless, sun-filled, blue sky. The sun had long succeeded in thawing the ice from the panes. Beads of water, tiny, leftover remnants of the winter storm, peppered the glass.

Resting her chin upon her hand, Elyse followed the zig-zag path those crystal drops took.

Where she’d been joined a day earlier by her maid, who’d been besieged by terror, Joan had now opted to ride on the box with Kenneth, and Elyse found herself alone.

Alone but for her solitary thoughts; thoughts which were intermittently interrupted by the combined laughter, boisterous and almost childlike of her driver and lady’s maid.

Between that levity and the vibrant glare of the rays nearly blinding as they gleamed off the windows and the flawless azure sky that extended as far as her eye could see, Elyse could almost believe summer had arrived. And that everything that’d transpired late last evening had merely been the stuff of dreams.

It was, however, when she glanced down at the roads and not up at the distant horizon, she had confirmation there’d been no dream, only a real-life encounter between herself and some stranger.

“You can keep calling him a stranger,” she muttered under her breath. “But you shared more with that stranger than you have your sisters, your parents, Aunt Hester—”

Kenneth’s booming laugh interrupted the rest of Elyse’s sentence.

“Yes, it is farcical. I agree.”

This time, Joan joined in with a rollicking laugh of her own.

With a groan, Elyse sank deeper and deeper into the folds of her seat. “Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.” She beat that mantra into her head—to no avail.

Elyse had sworn the last place she’d wished to journey this Christmastide Season was to whatever good friends had invited the Caldecott brood to this year. That was why she’d welcomed the snowstorm that stalled her travels.

And The Mermaid Inn? That medieval structure built a lifetime ago, had been her salvation.

That was, until the mortifying second where she’d believed Bran intended to kiss her, and she’d closed her eyes and stretched up on tiptoes and made to kiss him in return.

You silly ninny. Did you truly believe he intended to kiss you?

When he’d pounced on her in his chambers and taken her for a thief, he’d spoken quite plainly and shared his truths. She didn’t possess the manner of beauty to tempt him.

She’d never been anything more than passably pretty. She’d not much cared one way or another about her looks since she didn’t wish to marry.

And if she ever did change her mind on the matter? Well, she certainly wouldn’t tie herself to some vacuous fellow who cared about her appearance.

Elyse stilled; the passing snowscape became a blur before her, as she lost herself in the recent exchange that continued to bedevil.

…I do not care if she is Athena or Cleopatra resurrected from her lost tomb. For that matter, I barely recall the woman’s name.

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