Read Online Lorelie Brown by An Indiscreet Debutante - Free Book Online Page B

needed to go home. Bedraggled wasn’t the word. He carried his suit coat over one arm, and his shirt’s thin linen clung to his skin.
    Clung. To his skin.
    Beneath was the slightly darker outline of a sleeveless undershirt. But sweet heaven and the virgin’s baby, where had all that muscle come from? His shoulders weren’t wide, but they were assuredly deep—layered with stacked weight that spoke of strong muscles and arms that were built for cradling women and banging steel around. A sword.
    With that build, he ought to be carrying a sword.
    He had the temerity to make it worse. “Lottie?” he asked. Her name, but it was enough. A deep, purring curl that worst of all, she knew he didn’t intend her to take in a tempting manner.
    She pressed her hands flat over her stomach to keep in the tumbling feelings that threatened to shake away her calm. “That is, we cannot possibly send you home in such a state.” She snapped her fingers, and a footman popped in. “Andrew will take you to a spare bedroom. We’ll either get your clothes cleaned up and dried, or we’ll find you something else to wear home.”
    “It’s quite all right.” His hair was plastered to his forehead, the dark brown strands almost black. She wanted to smooth them back. His skin might be cool to the touch. She could warm him.
    “I insist. It’s the least we can do.” Her voice broke. Cracked and whistled away like a lesser person without control of her emotions. She stopped. Pressed her palms flat together and ignored the sticky sheen of sweat between them. “I would appreciate the chance to bestow our hospitality.”
    He saw too bloody much. The way he looked at her. Looked into her. Sympathy turned his eyes warm, and she wanted to fold her forehead to his surprisingly strong chest. Let the worries melt away.
    If only it were ever that easy.
    He nodded. “All right.”
    She had him seen to a guest bedroom, and then she ran to her own on the floor above. Only once she was in the privacy of her own rooms did she dare turn her attention downward. She flinched at the muddy, bedraggled hem of her dress.
    She’d loved the pale purple silk when she’d seen it, and she’d selected the silver cording to go with it, but that mattered little now. Six inches of dirt ringed the bottom, and mother’s clutching hands had streaked smudges all over the lap.
    This was why they lived in Chelsea. This was why she kept Mama away from everyone else. Things exploded, and her humiliation turned into everyone’s purview. She couldn’t think of that now.
    The best way to push it away was always to find something else to concentrate on. She’d spent years pouring effort into the school and her friends. She had enough outside interests to absorb her time, keeping the school from tipping into destruction. Fallout from any scandal with regards to Patricia would be one scandal too much.
    This was part of why she’d never marry. She never wanted to bring a new person into her crazy world. That wasn’t considering her fear of becoming her mother. Mama’s madness reached its peak with having Lottie—as it had with her grandmother as well, though they’d managed to hide that from the world at large. Everyone thought her lake drowning had been accidental.
    Calling her maid to assist, Lottie changed as quickly as she could with shaking hands and weak knees. She found herself in the corridor downstairs at the polished mahogany door. How very innocuous.
    She shouldn’t knock. It was one thing to offer him a chance to dry or that she’d sent in the tea promised two hours ago. She couldn’t put herself in that room with him alone when she didn’t know what kind of clothing had been found for him.
    Her hand leapt up almost of its own will, rapping the dark wood.
    “Come in,” he answered in a rough, deep voice.
    She darted in. Her back pressed against the cool door, but only for a moment. Her breathing tumbled and shivered, but it wasn’t as if she were shaking.