Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tick tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Time was running out. He'd done all he could for now. It was up to her to move forward and take the routes necessary to save them both.
Drifting from the vessel, the spirit of the watch hovered over the tense but lovely face of the woman in the bed.
Soon.
Soon, his plan would come to fruition. Soon his task would be complete. Soon he would be one-step closer to freedom—from the watch, and the enchantment binding him. Gathering together bits of his dwindling power, he acted.
“Wake up....” A tickling, now familiar disembodied voice woke Haven with a warm, intimate whisper against her ear. Startled, she sat up.
“Dammit,” she exclaimed, and glared at the watch on the floor.
She’d spent the night curled into a tight ball on her bed, as far away as she could get without crawling into a wall crevice like a rat.
Once her courage had reached a sufficient level, she slunk to the armoire.
Looking down at the watch, she said, “You brought me here, you can take me home. I just need to figure out how you work.”
With a heaping helping of bravado, and a smidgen of caution, she picked it up.
Before tucking it into the cup of her bra, which she’d put on under her Regency clothing, she hesitated a moment to consider where it would nestle.
“If you vibrate or start talking to me, I am going to toss you into the nearest body of water. Got it?” Despite her outburst, she was grateful it didn’t respond.
Strangely energized, she summoned Roselyn with the pull of the bell, and made a mental note to find a more secure and less intimate place to hide the watch.
She spent a long day walking and chatting with Millie as she bustled about preparing for the dinner party.
When the clock neared the dinner hour, Haven sat at the dressing table in her room, and Roselyn set to work transforming her array of curling hair into a work of art.
With a few skilled tugs and tucks, Roselyn hid the scar developing over Haven’s eyebrow.
Haven was nervous, and a little petrified, about meeting more people from 1817, but also excited. How many twenty-first century women could sit and chat with living, breathing men and women from Regency England? She'd wager she was the only one.
“There you go, miss, all finished.” Roselyn's soft voice broke through Haven's reverie.
Standing, she walked to the full-length mirror, and gasped.
“This isn't me. I can't believe it.” She blinked a few times to make sure the vision was real. In the mirror was the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen. Wearing a deep green off-the-shoulder gown, she was mesmerized by the transformation—from bedraggled heathen to resplendent goddess.
A knock on the door heralded Millie’s arrival. The older woman smiled brightly when she saw her.
“Oh, my dear, you look so very lovely. You will be the delight of the dinner party.”
Haven laughed. “Millie, thank you. I’m a little nervous. I’ve never been to a dinner party before. What if I say the wrong thing, or eat with the wrong fork, or sneeze into the soup?”
“We've all dealt with fears and insecurities before.
While you'll find this hard to believe, I haven't always been a graceful, wise, and well-behaved hostess. I was young, scared, and clumsy once.” She laughed, a warm sound that filled Haven’s heart.
“I remember my very first dinner party. I attended with my brother, mother, and fifteen of her closest friends.
I was so nervous I accidentally spilled my claret down Baron Gladstone's obnoxious peacock-blue waistcoat.
He sputtered so horribly that he turned a mottled red before the footman could get there to help him pull back his chair.
He was rather large and couldn't rise without the strong arms and backs of several young footmen.
In a failed attempt to help him stand, one of the footmen slipped, loosening his hold on Gladstone's arm, and the most esteemed baron fell flat on his pompous ass. You should have seen my mother. She was so embarrassed she spent the remaining hours of the party gallantly trying to hide a case of hiccups. She hiccupped when she became overwrought, you see.”
Laughing until tears spilled, Haven croaked, “Now, that is a terrible story.”
“That is only one of the hundreds of stories I could tell you, but since we are expected downstairs, they will wait.”
Millie led Haven from the safety of her room.
Holding back a shudder of trepidation, she tipped back her chin, and squared her shoulders. It was just dinner, talking, and some after-dinner musical entertainment. She knew she could survive. But why, when everything sounded so tame, did it feel like she was headed into the lion’s den?
Laughter from the top of the stairs alerted Logan to the approach of the woman who had weighed most on his mind over the course of the day.
Unable to peel his mind from their blazing and intense encounter the night before, he had spent the day avoiding her.
He hid away in his study, wishing he could relive last night, and re-experience the pleasure again and again, only this time he wouldn’t stop.
He wouldn't have just touched her breasts; he would have devoured them, making them wet and swollen beneath the onslaught of his tongue. He wondered what she would taste like, if she would be as sweet and addictive as he had dreamed. His mind kept returning to their heated and wild kiss. A kiss so sensual he could still feel her lips against his all these hours later. Her ripe, red mouth crushed against his in a way that changed his life forever. He’d never be the same, but he was determined to forget it, leave it be, and pray the taste and erotic promise would fade from his memory.
Like hell.
It was chiseled into his soul.
Clasping his hands behind his back, he glanced up the stairs to the landing.
His lungs failed him.
She was a vision.
Forcing his mind to form thoughts, he pushed past the lump in his throat, and stared as she descended the staircase, one delicately slippered foot at a time.
Her dress was the perfect backdrop on which the rest of the masterpiece was painted.
The green of the gown emphasized the creamy olive gold of her skin, and the richness of tone and complexion.
Her lustrous hair was a shimmering crown atop her head, adorned with emerald hair pins that twinkled like captured stars in the twilight of her locks.
Her cheeks pinkened with a deep red blush that enhanced the image of refined lady, but her eyes dashed the image of a proper woman to pieces beneath the heady and wanton gaze of a sorceress.
Dear God.
This was going to be the longest dinner party in history.
He reached to take her trembling hand, and nearly smiled at the satisfaction her nervousness brought him. He bowed, and their gazes met over her supple, white gloves.
He brushed his lips along her knuckles, and almost groaned when the blaze in her eyes exploded into a firestorm. Sensations blasted through him.
He couldn’t fathom it; she desired him, and was just as affected by him as he was by her.
Tit for tat.
He smiled, thoughts of her trembling beneath him flooding his mind.