TOUCH ME by Lucy Monroe

Author:Lucy Monroe
Format: epub, mobi

Drake pulled his curricle to a stop in front of the old-fashioned town house. Its exterior looked quite different from that of Lady Boyle's. Thea marveled at the brickwork, so unlike anything back home. She marveled at something else as well. Lady Upworth's home was not mired in layers of coal dust like so many buildings in London. She wondered how her aunt had managed it.

She broke the silence she had kept since leaving Lady Boyle's. "Do you think she will like me?"

"You told me that you two have corresponded since you learned to write."

She relaxed a little, thinking of the hundreds of letters she had exchanged with her aunt over her lifetime. "Yes."

"Then she no doubt already loves you."

The words warmed her and she turned a grateful smile to Drake. "Thank you."

He nodded before getting down to help her from the curricle. He put out his gloved hand and she rested her fingers in his, allowing him to guide her to the cobbled pavement. Tucking her hand into the crook of his arm, he led her to the door. It opened almost immediately after Drake had banged the large brass knocker against the door.

"Yes?"

The butler's stooped appearance and gray hair did not detract from his air of proper authority.

"We are here to see Lady Upworth."

The elderly servant stepped back to usher Drake and Thea into the hall. "Whom shall I tell Milady is calling?"

Thea's throat closed. To be so close to her aunt, the one member of her family still living that knew of Thea's existence. The opulence of the house, the foreignness of things that should be familiar because she'd heard about them her entire life, overwhelmed her, and she could not make any words get past the thickness in her throat. She threw a desperate glance at Drake, and he answered the servant.

"Please inform her that Miss Selwyn and Mr. Drake are awaiting her convenience."

She had no time to collect herself before the butler returned. "Milady will see you in her private parlor."

He led them on a ponderous procession up a flight of stairs. Opening a heavy ornate door to the left, the butler indicated they should enter. Thea could not seem to make her feet move. Drake took her arm and gently pulled her into a lady's sitting room.

The furnishings were exactly as Lady Upworth had sketched them. Matching chairs with needlepoint cushions sat opposite a fainting couch near the fireplace. The smell of furniture wax and dried flowers permeated the room. The escritoire her aunt had been so thrilled to find at a shop on the Pall Mall resided near the window. It looked exactly like the sketch she had sent, except it shone in a way that a charcoal sketch could not catch.

And next to the small desk sat an elderly woman dressed in the first stare of fashion. Her aunt.

"Is it really you?" Lady Upworth's voice came out in a choked whisper.

Gripping the edge of the escritoire, she stood and the skirts of her black gown fell in graceful folds toward the floor.

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