Page 7 of A Kiss For All Time (For All Time #2)

Fable didn’t have much of a figure.

She was basically straight without a voluptuous curve to her, so she was glad that the fashionable clothes of the time created ways to make her look more womanly.

Of course, a corset made of pastel peach silk and pieces of whalebone was pretty but painful as it pushed up her bust and slimmed her waist, but one suffered to be beautiful, didn’t one? The attached sleeves, despite being a bit long, fit her slim arms as if they were made for her.

They weren’t.

According to Edith the clothes belonged to Flora, one of Lady Prudence’s head servants.

Fable didn’t care where they came from.

She’d learned in her life to be thankful for whatever came her way.

So, she let Edith dress her in voluminous petticoats that Edith had to pin up so Fable wouldn’t trip over them.

There were actual wooden hoops placed at her sides to widen the silhouette of her hips.

Covered in petticoats, they looked wider than a linebacker’s shoulders.

According to Edith, they weren't half as wide as those of the noble ladies.

Nor was the fabric as fine. A tight bodice decorated with ribbons stopped her from breathing when Edith pulled the laces tighter from the back. “So, I guess breathing and sitting down isn’t an option,”

she said wryly while she lifted one foot at a time to be fitted with shoes from Edith’s friend Rose from the west wing.

They were made of coral silk and wood.

Cotton pads were placed inside the soles for comfort.

She was a servant, not a noble woman so she wasn’t invited to wear a wig, powdered or otherwise.

There wasn’t time to pin up her hair and she didn’t want it braided, so she wrapped it up in a loose bun on top of her head.

She loosened a few tendrils that curled around her face.

Edith showed her approval with a circlet of babies-breath that she wrapped around the bun. When she was finally ready to leave her rooms and see the duke, Edith led her to the dining Hall.

Her heart felt as if it were beating in her throat.

She thought of him telling her he was permanent.

Why would he say such pleasing things, things that made her heart dance if he didn’t like her? She wanted to squeal with happiness and twirl her way to the entrance.

When she reached the doors and stepped inside, every eye turned to her.

Every eye but the duke’s.

Fable scanned her gaze over all the faces but he wasn’t there.

For a second, she felt panic rising in her.

She didn’t belong here, dressed like something she wasn’t.

She wasn’t a servant.

She wasn’t a noble lady. She didn’t know where to stand or what she should eat. She thought about turning back around and running to her rooms.

“Come, Miss,”

Edith appeared again at her side and urged her forward toward the tables.

“Where’s the duke?”

Fable leaned in and whispered to her.

“Bryce from the kitchen said he saw the duke ride away without a word to anyone.”

He rode away? Where did he go? Fable worried.

Why would he leave now when he told Edith to dress her and bring her to him, when every mouth she passed set whispers to the air?

“Who is she?”

“I heard the duke found her on the streets of the city.”

“I heard the duke was fond of her.

But look at her, she’s much too plain to interest him.”

“How fond of her can he be? He’s not here to even greet her.”

“I saw him leaving in a hurry,”

one of them said.

“Or I should say he was running away.”

Those particular whispers came from a group of ladies standing around the large fireplace.

They sneered at Fable when she glanced their way.

Usually, she let jabs and jibes slide off her.

They mostly came from unhappy, insecure, hateful people.

She tried not to let these girls bother her, but the more they laughed, holding dainty, gloved fingers to their mouths, the angrier she grew at the duke for not being here.

“Get me more tea,”

one of them called out to her.

“And be quick about it!”

shouted another.

“Ladies,”

Edith intervened.

“I beg your pardon, but–”

One of them stepped forward and held up her palm to quiet Edith.

Lady Charlotte.

Fable remembered her when she stood with the duke’s sister earlier.

At the time, she hadn’t taken her gaze from the duke for a second.

“Are Lady Prudence’s guests to be scolded by a servant?”

She did nothing to mask her contempt for Fable when she set her burning gaze on her.

Then she turned her smug smile to the others.

“I saw this one earlier running around the halls in her nightdress and stockinged-feet.”

The others gasped and sneered some more.

But Lady Charlotte wasn’t done.

“She brazenly ran to Lord Sudbury and laughed with him in the face of Lady Prudence, behaving like nothing more than a street prostitute.”

A what? Fable lifted her head and clenched her teeth.

She’d listened to enough.

With her hands balled into fists at her sides she strode toward them, Lady Charlotte in particular.

“Who the fu–”

“Lady Charlotte!”

They all turned to the duke standing in the doorway.

Somehow he appeared taller, more like a storm,a gleam of lightning in his eyes as unyielding as the cut of his jaw.

As he came near, the women took a collective step back.

Everyone but Fable.

She stared at him while he glared at the others.

“Get out,”

he ordered Lady Charlotte in a quiet, chilled voice.

“Don’t let me see you here again.”

He raked his gaze over the others.

“Miss Ramsey here is my guest.

I won’t tolerate vicious rumors against her.

If they continue, you will all be asked to leave, as well.”

He turned to Fable now and let his gaze warm over her face.

She looked away and then stormed out of the dining Hall.

She couldn’t breathe.

Did women back here in the eighteenth century die from their corsets and bodices being too tight?

Fingers closed around her wrist, stopping her.

She spun around to see the duke.

She couldn’t say that in any other time, he’d be a dream come to life, because all the centuries were the same.

People barely tolerated the poor.

If you were street poor, you were worth as much as a sewer rat.

But he was different.

He was a dream come to life in any time.

“Where are you going?”

“Where were you?”

she asked, barely hearing his question.

“You keep claiming to want to protect me, but you told Edith to dress me and bring me to the dining Hall.

You threw me to the wolves and left me to protect myself.”

“I didn’t know they would be there,”

he said, attempting to defend himself.

“Whatever,”

she threw at him and ignored the way he mouthed the word contemptuously.

“Why did you leave? Where were you going?”

She wanted him to tell her he wasn’t running away.

“I…I…It…”

“Really?”

she mocked.

“You can’t even talk about it? Were you running from me?”

When he didn’t answer, she yanked her arm free, but he grasped her wrist again.

“I asked you where you were going, Fable.”

“To my room.”

“Did you eat?”

Oh, how could his voice alone tempt her to forgive him anything? But she’d been unprepared for so many critical eyes and spiteful tongues.

He’d dressed her up, put her on stage alone for all to see and laugh at.

She yanked her arm away.

“Don’t concern yourself with me anymore, Your Grace.”

“I’d like nothing more than to do that, Miss Ramsey,”

he told her in a voice strained with control.

A dream come true…for someone else.

“Oh? Is that so?”

she demanded, feeling her temper rising.

“Fine.

I’ll make it easy for you.”

He’d heard the things Lady Charlotte had said to her.

Why wasn’t he telling her that he didn’t see her in those ugly ways? Was any of it even his fault? She wasn’t sure about anything! She didn’t even know if the life she was living right now was real!

“I’m leaving.”

She wondered why she couldn’t look at him while she said it.

“I don’t think you’re well enough–”

“I’ll be fine, My Lord Duke.”

Now she lifted her chin and met his gaze.

“I know how to survive on my own.”

It pierced her insides that he wasn’t asking or telling her to stay.

He’d made his feelings clear.

He wanted to stop concerning himself with her.

“Thank you for everything.”

Unlike her mother, she would thank her host.

She turned on her heel and left him behind.

He didn’t stop her.

He didn’t call out.

He let her go.

She would never forgive him for that.

She stepped into the guest chambers and bolted the door behind her.

She knew how to walk away from a person who really didn’t care one way or the other if she was around–or if she was a burden.

So, her silly fairytale was over.

They always ended.

So what? What was so special about Benjamin West anyway? she asked herself, swiping foolish tears from her cheeks.

So what if he walked with the rigid arrogance of a prince? He wasn’t one.

So what if he was as detached as a statue of a warlord? He was just a man. So what if he was always reluctantly warm and caring toward her? She swiped a tear away from her cheek and reached behind her for the laces of her bodice. She pulled off everything Edith had dressed her in except her hose and found the clothes she arrived in. She slipped on her black shorts and boots, along with her top, thankfully cleaned by someone who worked here. Lastly, she tugged the babies-breath from her hair and pulled her locks free.

She’d head back to Ipswich and get the pocket watch from where she’d hidden it.

Whoever was chasing her wouldn’t think she’d go back.

Would he? She prayed he wasn’t outside the front doors right now.

Come to think of it, where were the front doors? She shrugged and peaked outside the guestroom door for any sign of the duke.

There wasn’t any.

She swore an oath and set out on her way.

Unfortunately, she met over a dozen people on her way to the exit.

At least six of them were stately looking ladies with powdered wigs and faces.

Fable knew the white facial powder was in.

Of all the fads, that was the one she understood the least.

Why would anyone want to look like the walking dead? Each lady had a mother beside her to match.

Fable felt as if she were in some drug-induced dream.

The ladies all stared at her obscene way of dressing, shaking their heads disapprovingly. The men stared for other reasons.

She hurried out.

Good riddance, Colchester House!

The door slammed shut behind her.

#

She walked for about an hour after the rain started, swearing at the torrential downpour–and at Benjamin West, His Grace the Duke of Colchester for not being the things he said he was, dependable, permanent.

She had to find shelter but she didn’t want to run into a barn or someplace without people, especially since she had the feeling someone was following her.

She turned twice to confront whoever it was, but her vision was severely impaired in the heavy rain.

She considered that it might be the duke keeping pace behind her, but he wouldn’t have let her get drenched before stopping her.

Would he? No.

He was considerate.

Something fell behind her.

She spun around.

“Who’s there! Ben? Your Grace?”

She saw a shadow move in the downpour and shielded her eyes.

A man moved closer.

“You call for the duke,”

a vaguely familiar voice rang out.

“Do you know him?”

She caught the flash of metal in the moonlight.

A sword? His voice! It was the time-traveler! She fought the urge to scream.

Who would come to save her? There was no one.

Nothing had changed.

She braced herself as he approached.

If he put a finger on her– Her heart thumped in her chest and made her feel lightheaded and dizzy.

#

“That’s it? You’re really going to let her go?”

“Simon!”

Prudence gasped.

“What would you have him do? Chase after someone lower than a peasant?”

Sudbury turned to her, his usual easy smile replaced by a disapproving scowl.

“I don’t like this side of you, lady.

It’s most unattractive.”

When she stared at him as if he’d slapped her and then began to weep, he looked pained, but turned back to Ben.

“Don’t just stand there, Brother.

You need her.”

“I can’t give up on…my dream,”

Ben answered quietly.

His sister looked up.

“What dream? Is it to be known as the rudest duke in the kingdom?”

Ben clenched his teeth remembering Lady Charlotte, along with her other cackling hens, belittling Miss Ramsey when he wasn’t there.

He was sorry he hadn’t been there.

Sorrier than he cared to be.

He’d had to use every ounce of strength he possessed not to pull her into his arms in front of all, and hold her.

He hadn’t known his sister had invited her five friends.

When he told Edith to bring her to the dining Hall, he hadn't known they’d all be there, or that they would behave so ruthlessly.Still, it was no excuse for running away and leaving her at the mercy of others.

Miss Ramsey had depended on him and he’d already let her down. He wanted to apologize to her. He wanted to beg her forgiveness for leaving and not protecting her. But she wasn’t what he needed to heal. Leading men into battle, fighting, and avenging his family was what he needed. Why had he let her make him sway in other directions? Why had he made himself her protector? Why should he stop her when it was better that she left?

“Lady Charlotte deserved to be thrown out,”

he told his sister.

“Make sure you don’t bring her back or I’ll throw her out again.

And if you think for one moment that I would wed a woman like her, you’re mad.”

He had nothing else to say, and though they had barged into his private sitting room, he was the one who left.

If Miss Ramsey was gone, he didn’t want to think of her or where she was going to go now.

When thunder shook the foundations, he looked toward the window and scowled darker than the skies outside.

No.

Not rain.

Of course the trouble maker would choose to leave on a night when it was pouring rain.

With a low growl he ripped his cloak from Stephen’s hands.

Without giving a thought to how his steward was always a step ahead of him, he opened the door and strode into the coming storm.

He went to the stable and quickly saddled his horse himself.

He found a lantern, lit it, and looked around.

The heavy charcoal clouds were almost upon them.

Which way should he go? He looked toward the northeast, toward Ipswich and started that way.

He called out her name, and then heard others calling as well.

Sudbury and Stephen, along with six other servants.

Turning to watch them approach, he drew in a deep breath then proceeded to give them all direction like a high-ranking soldier.

He watched as they spread out then turned to his own path.

After a quarter of an hour, they still hadn’t found her.

When the rains started, Ben’s vision did him little good.

He called her name, hoping she had found shelter and was keeping dry.

She’d said she knew how to survive on her own.

But when he’d found her in his garden, she was starving and she could barely walk.

He called out again, holding up his lantern to see.

What if there truly was a man chasing her? And what if he found her? Ben’s heart thumped with such force, he thought he could hear it.

Why had he let her leave? What happened to his iron control?

And then, he saw her out of the corner of his eye.

A liquid flame wavering in the flashing lightning.

Another figure appeared to huddle in the downpour before seeing him and taking off.

Was it a trick of Ben’s eyes?

Letting the figure flee, he thundered toward her on his horse.

He leaped from the saddle before the mount stopped–before Fable’s body hit the ground.

He caught her and clutched her to his chest, her hair dripping over his arms like streaks of blood.

“Miss Ramsey? Fable? Fable?”

He shielded her face from the rain but she didn’t open her eyes.

Lifting her in his arms, he bent to listen for her breathing.

He couldn’t hear anything but the alarms going off in his head.

“What are you trying to do to me, Lady?”

he asked, scooping up her limp, cold body.

He had to get her back to the house and the physician.

Letting that one mission lead him, he secured her to his horse and leaped up behind her and raced home.

He burst through the door, calling for the physician and Edith, giving orders to the latter to send out some men to bring Sudbury and the others back.

He brought her to her bed and set her down in it.

“Does she live?”

He’d tried to keep his voice calm and steady when he spoke to the physician.

He was a master at remaining calm, but when it came to her, he lost control over his senses.

“She lives,”

the physician assured him.

“What’s the matter with her? Why isn’t she waking up?”

“Your Grace,”

the physician told him with a slight sigh while Ben paced.

“You will be the first to know once I figure it out myself.”

“You can survive on your own, hmm?”

Ben asked over her unconscious form.

“You didn’t last two hours!”

The physician wisely pretended not to hear him and continued to examine her.

Twice, Ben glowered at him impatiently.

Edith returned to tend to her and practically pushed him out of the way.

He glared at her as well.

Finally finished with his examination, the physician looked up.

“She needs to be kept warm.

She wasn’t completely recovered.

She never should have gone out in the rain.”

He handed Edith a packet of herbs with instructions on putting it in her tea.

“Perhaps,”

he paused on his way out and said to Ben, “you should try to keep her out of trouble.”

Ben would have laughed if he wasn’t scowling so hard until the physician left.

“Why did she leave, Your Grace?”

Edith asked him quietly when they were alone.

“I thought she liked it here.”

Yes, she did seem to like it here, Ben thought.

Did she like him, perhaps? “I was careless with her.”

He gazed at her sleeping face.

He wanted to get closer but Edith worked around him.

He saw that her hair still dripped over her face.

He wanted to pick up a cloth and wipe the droplets from her forehead, her temples, around her eyes and over the curve of her cheek and jaw.

His heart raced, yet he felt as if the world had slowed, giving him time to bask in her.

He looked away.

He brought her back. He didn’t regret it. Despite her claim, she couldn’t survive well on her own. What was she doing just standing there getting soaked through to the bone? Did she have no sense at all? Was there no place nearby to seek shelter? What was the shadow he’d seen? Was it her sword-wielding time traveler?

“I’ll dry her hair, Sir,”

Edith told him, seemingly unaware of his warring thoughts.

“And I’ll have to change her out of her clothes.”

“Oh, of course,”

he said.

“Just one moment.”

When Edith nodded and went off to busy herself with something else in the room, he bent close to Miss Ramsey’s ear and said in a low voice.

“I’m afraid that if I let you, you will become all I care about.

The one I put first before all else.

The reason I live or the reason I die.

I can’t allow that, Miss Ramsey.

I’m drawn to a different calling, and one day, when I die on the battlefield I don’t want to leave you behind.”

He went still when her fingers reached for his temple and traced through his hair, her touch as light as butterfly wings before her arm fell limp again at her side.

“Fable?”

he whispered.

Had she heard what he said? He bit his lip as if to silence himself.

When she didn’t respond, he felt relieved and stepped out of the room and into the path of another storm.

“You went after her!”

his sister said through clenched teeth, approaching him in the hall.

“And this time you dragged Simon with you.”

Ben kept walking, paying no attention to her.

When he passed her, he closed his eyes and let out the troubled sigh he’d been containing.

He’d found Miss Ramsey and brought her back.

It wasn’t long before Edith called him to return.

He didn’t go right away but finished his chess game with Sudbury.

A game he almost lost.

He had to make her less important to him.

He didn’t know how she’d crept inside his defenses, but she was there, in his heart like a thorn.

When the servant came looking for him in the fencing house, where he was practicing, his defenses nearly crumbled.

“Forgive me, Your Grace, but nothing I do is warming her!”

Edith lamented.

“I fear she is freezing to death.”

He yanked off his mask and laid his sword aside and hurried back to the house.

To her chambers.

He was torn between never forgiving himself for causing this condition in her, or for caring what condition this trouble was in.

It was all she ever caused. Trouble.

She had been changed into dry, warm clothes, but Edith was correct, she was still as cold as death.

After Ben had his clothes brought to him, he changed out of his fencing uniform and sat by her bed long into the night, long after he sent Edith to her own bed.

No amount of warming her bed raised her body heat.

When her teeth began to chatter and she shivered in her slumber, Ben saw no other option but to get into bed with her.

He remained still for a moment.

What if she woke up and slapped him? He’d suffered worse wounds than a slap in the mouth by a dainty hand.

Emboldened by his desire to warm her, he slipped his arms around her and pulled her closer against him.

He felt his heart thundering against both their chests as he covered her beneath the warmth of his leg.

Should he hate himself for being so bold with her? So intimate? He closed his eyes and rubbed her back.

He worked his hand over her shoulder, down her arm.

Was his heart so traitorous that he liked how she felt pressed close to him? She made him feel warm and oddly content.

He hoped to spread his warmth to her.

When he came to her hand, he held her fingers to his lips and breathed his warm breath onto them, on her wrist and pulse.

He thought he felt her move.

A tremor down her spine that made her shift ever so slightly between his legs.As if she were responding to his touch.

Or had he imagined it?

“Miss Ramsey?”

he asked in a quiet voice.

He must have imagined it.

She didn’t respond now.

But she did feel warmer to the touch.

“That’s my fighter,”

he said into her hair.

“Rest now.

I’ll keep you warm.”

He closed his eyes, fearing the trouble she brought.

Every time he thought of some sort of defense against her, the feel of her in his arms overwhelmed him and he could think of nothing but how she had started off there and how much he wanted to keep her there.