“I have your lemonade, princess.”
He turned and nearly dropped the mugs.
The bodice of Amelia’s dress had pooled at her waist, leaving her in nothing but stays and a chemise so fine it was nearly translucent. His mouth turned to coal dust.
“I’m hot, too hot.” She yanked at the neckline of her chemise.
Bloody hell. He picked up the coat he’d tossed on the floor and tried to wrap it around her shoulders as she struggled to escape.
“It’s for your own good.” Of course, she would refuse help. It didn’t come on a gilded plate.
He wrapped one arm around her, pinning her to him. With the other, he stuffed the coat between them and tucked it beneath her armpits.
The fewer layers between her and the heat the better, but she was going to strip his hide with her barbed tongue as it was. Heaven help him if she woke half-naked.
Her struggling subsided, and he managed to lower the two of them back onto the chair. Her ribs expanded and contracted against his chest with increasing force, and the vein on the side of her throat thrummed with more regularity in rhythm.
She was getting stronger. Color was creeping into her skin. Her cheeks began to flush, and her lips slowly changed from blue to white, to a light pink.
No longer looking like she’d been pulled dead from the Thames, she was every bit as beautiful as he remembered.
Confident that she was going to pull through, he closed his eyes.
The door crashed open.
“I’ll have your rutting neck, you rutting bastard.”
Chapter2
Amelia woke with a ringing in her ears—a head-throbbing sound like a cymbal wielded by a mad chambermaid. There was distant yelling and a thudding crash accompanied by the rapid, uneven chatter of her own teeth. Last week’s Appleby debutante recital, which she’d foolishly attended, had been unrivaled wretchedness. Until tonight. Whatever this was, it was worse than six tone-deaf society hopefuls.
She sucked in a breath, pulling her knees closer to her chest. So. Cold.
The yelling continued. Maybe Lord Chester had finally been caught with Lord Macklebury’s wife? Maybe the simmering tension between Miss Hamilton and Miss Clarke had finally boiled over.
She would investigate. The second she could open her eyes.
Crockery smashed. “I will kill you, you rutting bastard.”
That was her father…Someone must have been serving the good brandy. Or any brandy, really.
She dragged her eyes open, struggling to focus.What in heaven’s name?
She’d never been in a room like this. It was large-ish, roughly the size of a small ballroom, but it seemed to be a bedroom, drawing room, and kitchen in one. The walls were unadorned and tinged black with soot, the floor frightfully uneven. The overturned chair beside her was heavily worn.
But the tableau of characters in front of her? That was the most bewildering of all.
Her father was straddling a half-naked man with a broken table leg, raised and ready to strike. And Edward—
Why was he in town?
He should have come to call.
You’d think he’d be a better fiancéby now.Her stomach rumbled.Roast pheasant would be so nice…
“Settle down, man,” Edward said in his duke-ish tone. He had one hand clenched around her father’s wrist, preventing him from murder, the other arm wrapped around her father’s chest.
The flames from the fire beside her created shifting patterns of light on the stone. Why was she lying on the floor?
