Lady in Lace: Regency Timeslip by Joanna Maitland

Author:Joanna Maitland [Maitland, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joanna Maitland Independent
Published: 2018-10-15T18:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

The striking of a clock woke her.

Three o'clock in the morning? Emma sat bolt upright in bed and discovered she was alone. What's more, someone had dressed her in a filmy nightgown that had wrapped itself around her legs as she slept.

She could tell she was no longer in Will's bed, but it was too dark to see anything clearly in this new room. The fire in the grate had burned low. There was just enough light to make out the dark shapes of the furniture. She slipped her feet from under the warm bedclothes and crept across the carpet. In spite of her caution, the floorboards shifted and creaked under her feet like live things. But it couldn't be helped. She needed light.

She touched a spill to the embers in the grate and lit two candles. That was better. She raised one to look around. Yes, it was a blue bedchamber, clearly the one that Will had promised as her private retreat. Her clothes had been laid neatly on the chest at the end of the bed. Her heavy cloak was draped across the back of a chair. Even her boots and slippers were there, waiting to be put on. But she couldn't possibly dress by herself. Not well enough to pass muster with Bailey.

She put her candle on the bedside table and slumped down onto the side of the bed. Her loose hair tickled the side of her chin and she brushed it aside impatiently.

That was another thing she could not do by herself.

But she must do something. Her household would be in uproar when the servants discovered she was missing. She had to get back, and soon, even if she arrived so dishevelled that the servants suspected she had been ravished.

She took her candle across to the dressing table and scrutinised herself in the mirror there. Ravished was exactly the right word. Willingly ravished. She looked like a woman who had been well and truly loved. She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering.

Their love-making had been too special for words – slow and languorous, then urgent and demanding, but always completely fulfilling. And when she had fallen asleep, deliciously exhausted, he must have dressed her in this frivolous wisp of silk and carried her here. Had he laid out all her clothes as well? Quite probably, for who else was there to do it, when all the servants had been sent away? She remembered how delicately Will had removed her boots. He was capable of many surprising things.

Except, she remembered with a chuckle, lighting fires. But she supposed there was not much call for that particular skill aboard ship.

The woman in the mirror was smiling a secretive smile. Emma shook her head at her own reflection. "It's all very well," she whispered, "but how do I get out of this?"

There was one obvious way. If she were to put on the lace gown and then take it off again, she would be transported back to the modern day.

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