with a wince as she straightened up, tried valiantly to walk and gasped with pain as spasms hit her again. A footman brought an umbrella to cover them as Lawrence, Viscount Waldrip, picked up his writhing lady love and carried her limping up the steps and into the light of flambeaus, while another footman grabbed the reins of her steaming horse and walked him toward the stables. Parton bowed them into the marble hallway lit by candles reflected and refracted in the shimmering crystal of the chandelier overhead as he shut the door against the night.
Where had his wits gone,Waldrip wondered as he barked out commands. Seeing her in front of his home after twenty-five years of waiting had turned his brain to mush. The fact that his delight had ridden a horse, of all things, and a very large one at that, in her dancing slippers should have alerted him at once. But the puzzle would have to wait and so would his injured knee.
Alice knew that Waldrip was issuing orders to various servants from the rumbling in his chest that she felt rather than understood. A maid servant hurried before them holding a candelabrum to light their way. She was so caught up in the cold and cramping of her body that she hardly noticed her journey up the staircase to the large bedroom suite on the right – the one she knew quite well belonged to Waldrip. Behind them a tub appeared and more maid servants set it up by the sitting room fireplace where the fire was stoked and blazing by the time Waldrip laid her on his bed. Her slippers and stockings were expertly removed despite the wet cling of the shredded silk. A series of footmen carrying hot water filled the hip bath as slit gloves, sodden cloak, and broken plumes followed while Lady Alice Violette Lacey retreated to a cold numbness that did not respond to the warmth of the fire.
Waldrip glanced at her as he and a maid servant continued to pull off her gown, her light corset, whimsically embroidered with little purple clusters of flowers and then her soaking wet shift. His poor dear hadn’t even had the comfort of new fangled
Where had his wits gone,Waldrip wondered as he barked out commands. Seeing her in front of his home after twenty-five years of waiting had turned his brain to mush. The fact that his delight had ridden a horse, of all things, and a very large one at that, in her dancing slippers should have alerted him at once. But the puzzle would have to wait and so would his injured knee.
Alice knew that Waldrip was issuing orders to various servants from the rumbling in his chest that she felt rather than understood. A maid servant hurried before them holding a candelabrum to light their way. She was so caught up in the cold and cramping of her body that she hardly noticed her journey up the staircase to the large bedroom suite on the right – the one she knew quite well belonged to Waldrip. Behind them a tub appeared and more maid servants set it up by the sitting room fireplace where the fire was stoked and blazing by the time Waldrip laid her on his bed. Her slippers and stockings were expertly removed despite the wet cling of the shredded silk. A series of footmen carrying hot water filled the hip bath as slit gloves, sodden cloak, and broken plumes followed while Lady Alice Violette Lacey retreated to a cold numbness that did not respond to the warmth of the fire.
Waldrip glanced at her as he and a maid servant continued to pull off her gown, her light corset, whimsically embroidered with little purple clusters of flowers and then her soaking wet shift. His poor dear hadn’t even had the comfort of new fangled
