Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Caldwell, Christi Page 0,36
a small detail to note, and yet another change. One that marked not only the small changes that had befallen him in their time apart but also the station divide that had sprung between them.
She reached the carriage, and found an older, grey-haired driver in wait.
And having been so focused on the greater horror of reuniting with Dare and rejoining him in London, she only just now faced the detail she’d let herself forget—the carriage ride. The last time she’d journeyed in one, she’d vowed it would be her last. Her hands automatically went to her stomach, and she pressed them against her lower belly, and the wrenching cramps that threatened to tear her apart.
She couldn’t climb back inside one. Not without remembering all there was about that day and the ones preceding it.
“Is there a problem?” Dare asked, a question in his voice.
“There are any number of them,” she whispered.
He cupped a hand to his ear as he’d always done when she’d spoken to herself. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” she said now.
Accepting the driver’s proffered hand with a word of thanks, she drew herself inside. Gwynn followed close behind, and once again, there was an unexpected stab of disappointment as Dare swung into his saddle.
Of course he’d ride . . .
A different source of envy sluiced through her. What she wouldn’t give to exchange the closed-in carriage for the feel of a horse between her legs . . . and the fresh air. She hungered for that, too.
“I never thought to ride in a carriage fit for a queen,” Gwynn mused, taking up a spot across from Temperance.
While her friend prattled on about the grand conveyance, Temperance settled onto the plush, luxuriant squabs. She shifted back and forth on the bench. It was more spacious than the workstation she’d left behind at Madame Amelie’s, and perhaps she’d be all right, after all. Mayhap this would prove altogether different from the jarring ride she’d suffered through five years earlier. The one that had made it impossible for her to get herself into any other carriage since. And she had tried. A marquess’s stately carriage was nothing like the cramped quarters she’d suffered through, with passengers stinking of garlic and spirits and pipes . . .
Do not think of that day . . .
“People like us are destined for run-down hackneys,” her friend rightly pointed out, “and crowded mail carriages. The last time I journeyed anywhere was by mail coach.”
“Me, too,” Temperance whispered. She stared blankly at the heavy gold curtains drawn back at the windows. Her past and present blended.
“Miserable rides, aren’t they?”
I hate to send you by mail coach, but there is no other way . . . You cannot remain . . . It is not safe for you here . . .
Her lips twisted in a bitter, empty smile as she stopped fighting the past and finally made herself think about the last carriage ride she’d taken.
Terror, panic, and pain had buffeted her senses; a blessed numbness had prevented her from weeping before the eclectic crowd of passengers.
Gwynn touched her hand, bringing Temperance’s eyes open. “But this will be nothing like any ride we’ve taken before.”
She managed a nod.
God willing that her friend proved right.
The carriage lurched into motion, and along with it, her stomach.
And not even twenty minutes later, she’d all the confirmation she required.
“We should stop,” Gwynn said for a fifth time.
“I’m fine,” she said between gritted teeth, holding on to the sides of her bench and focusing on anything other than the churning of her turbulent belly.
“You are green.”
“I’m. Not.”
Gwynn peered at her. “I might point out that I can see you and you can’t very well see yourself, and so if you could look, you’d see that your pallor is, in fact, very nearly green.” The other woman reached for the valise resting beside her on the bench. “I can show you a mirror if you—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Temperance said weakly. And she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her stubborn friend’s insistence.
At last, Gwynn quieted, and Temperance closed her eyes once more.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in . . .
She focused on that mantra, talking herself through her roiling belly. “How long has it been?” she asked in slow, measured tones.
Gwynn consulted a timepiece affixed to the front of her cloak. “Twenty-six minutes, now.”
She groaned. “It cannot be just six minutes from when I asked?”
Her friend glanced down at the piece once more, and looked up, beaming. “Twenty-seven now.”