Read Online Again, My Lord: A Twist Series Novel by Katharine Ashe - Free Book Online

has Molly gone? I need her. Or Mrs. Whittle. Is there no other woman in this inn at present?” She frowned and looked at him again. “It will have to be you. How Evie will laugh at me when I write to her about this. Pinch me, my lord.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Pinch me.” She held out her arm. “Go ahead. I must wake up and this does seem the most fitting end to the dream, not to mention my awful tenure in this village.”
    “My lady, I’m afraid that I—”
    “Oh,
please
.” She rolled her eyes. “Even in my
dreams
you won’t touch me? Aphrodite, you are a horse’s ass of the highest order!” she shouted to the ceiling, abruptly silencing every soul in the room. She grabbed his hand and smacked it to her arm. “
Pinch me,
my lord. If you don’t, I shall ask this farmer beside me to do it instead. As he is already blushing to his red roots, it might cause him an apoplexy.”
    He pulled his hand out from beneath hers. “You are the oddest woman. I will not pinch you.”
    “The blushing farmer it must be, then.” She turned away from him. “Sir, would you be so kind as to— Oh!” She smacked her hand over her hip and pivoted back around. Her lovely face was suffused with surprise.
    “Well.” Tacitus allowed himself a slight smile. “You did not specify where I was to pinch.”
    “Y-You— You—” she stuttered. Then her lips closed and she blinked. Then she blinked again. “I did not wake up.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I did not wake up. I am still dreaming. You pinched me and I felt it, but only in the dream. I am still asleep.”
    “On the contrary. You are awake and I did actually just pinch you. But if you’ve been dreaming of me doing so, then perhaps we should have this conversation in a more private location.” Two could play at the game of teasing. That was one thing he
had
learned in six years.
    But she did not respond like he expected her to.
    “Excuse me, if you will,” she said blankly. “I should return to bed so I can wake up.” She went toward the doorway and nearly collided with a woman coming through it.
    “Lady
Calista
? Lady Calista Chance? It
is
you. Calista Chance—oh, but I’d heard you
married,
of course. Oh, what a delight to see you after all these years!”
    Tacitus swallowed over the anvil lodged in his throat. For a brief moment he had entirely forgotten she was
married
. And a
lady
. And entirely
unpinchable
. She had demanded that he pinch her and he’d done it, just as all those years ago he had driven her siblings around the countryside for a month, gave Lady Evelina all of the books he’d had and ordered more from the shop ten miles away, and lent his saddle horse to a boy of fifteen. All simply because she wished it. For God’s sake, he didn’t even pinch barmaids. And in the middle of a taproom, no less. What in the hell was he thinking?
    Nothing. In the presence of Calista Chance, his brain had always gone to porridge.
    “Dear Lady Calista, don’t you remember
me
?” the woman was saying.
    “Harriet Ryan?” Lady Holland mumbled.
    “Yes!” She clapped her hands covered in brilliant yellow gloves. “I’m married now, of course, as we
all
are, naturally. I am Harriet Tinkerson now. I
knew
you would remember. We sat beside each other in watercolors at the Bailey Academy for Young Ladies for two full years, after all.”
    “Do excuse me, Mrs. Tinkerson,” she said, and pushed past the woman.
    Tacitus crossed the room. No matter how strangely she was behaving, he owed her an apology. Mallory had been a wretched influence on him, obviously. His own mother must be rolling in her grave at present.
    “With this flood you will be here until tomorrow. How splendid!” Mrs. Tinkerson hurried after her. “I have a millinery shop now. Do say you will come see it. I daresay it’s as elegant as any shop in London you’ve ever seen,” she said to Lady Holland’s back as she went up the stairs.
    “Yes, of course,” she murmured without