A Little More Scandal by Carrie Lofty

Author:Carrie Lofty
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Fiction, Historical, General
ISBN: 9781451673654
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2012-05-28T21:00:00+00:00

Eleven

Catrin had never been more aware of whispers and stares as she crossed the ballroom. She was none so naïve as to believe the slight disguise of her mask would protect her. The twirling colors and twinkling jewels, the boisterous chatter and laughter—it blended into an aura that choked all her air.

Suddenly she was back in the water. Her fingers were chilled to the point of frostbite as she clung to a jagged piece of driftwood. The ache in her chest was grief, fatigue, and the cloudy, awful pain of drowning. Breathing . . . She could not. Water was in her mouth, all salt and putrid death.

“Catrin,” came a voice from very far away.

A comforting blackness shaded her eyes. Nothing more to see. No more pain. Floating in a way that was at once terrifying and comforting. How could that be?

“Catrin, look at me.”

That voice. She had come to relish its slurred brogue. Fighting past the foggy daze, she welcomed her sense of touch. William. His fingers on her face, gently stroking her cheeks. Then smell. She took her first deep breath, so welcome after the moment when her lungs had turned inside out. His scent was a sharp blend of shaving soap and his distinct masculine spice. She wanted to lick and keep licking.

“Come back, my darling. Look at me.”

And finally, sight. She blinked, blinked again, and found William’s bright hazel eyes. His sunny brown brows were furrowed, and that beautiful, sensual mouth was twisted around a grimace. He had appeared equally intense when readying to kiss her, but with none of the deathly serious concern.

“You’re so handsome,” she murmured.

“Oh, bloody hell, Catrin.”

Only then did she realize they were not alone. Dear Lord, far from it. William knelt on the ballroom floor. His arms cradled behind her back. Her mask was gone. She lay against his body, with her legs splayed gracelessly along the gleaming white marble. Futilely, she tried to tuck her skirts around her ankles, draw up her knees, hide. Around them gawked a circle of grotesquely blank expressions—dozens of masked faces with mouths active around hissed whispers.

Everyone looking at her.

She had never felt such overwhelming embarrassment. Sheer, painful, hot mortification swept up from her stomach and clustered below her voice box. She gulped, trying to swallow, and barely kept from being sick all over the Duchess’s polished floor. Or her own dress. Or William’s lovely new charcoal suit.

Again, his hands caressed her face. “Where are you?” he asked, the question rife with strain. “Can you answer that?”

“I need to leave.”

The words came out as a gasp. Another attack awaited her. She was losing her senses again, her sight dimming, her ears clouding with cottony distance. Only her hands seemed to work. When William lifted her straight off the floor, she clung to him as she had once clung to driftwood. He was her lifeboat now—her only hope of escaping that huge ballroom with some semblance of a future.

The crowd parted, but Catrin ducked away from those eerily still faces.

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