Borrowed Vows by Sandra Heath Read Free Book Online Page B

the courtyard.
    She gazed after him and knew that the promised pleasure could only commence if she melted the ice within him. She closed her eyes and raised her face toward the moon. Dream or not, it was her dream, and she intended to indulge in it to the full.
    She only had until dawn, for in the words of one of her favorite heroines from fiction, tomorrow was another day.
     

Chapter Six
     
    She followed Dane into the castle, but as she passed beneath the porch into the wide passageway beyond, there was no sign of him. She guessed he’d gone to his apartment, which adjoined hers, or rather Rosalind’s, and so she made her way in that direction.
    It was strange how she knew the layout of the castle. From the moment she entered, she was completely familiar with everything about the ancient fortress. She was also aware of exactly how to conduct herself, so that when she encountered a footman, she inclined her head just sufficiently and then swept on by in a whisper of emerald silk. It was almost amusing to know how completely she fooled him, but then why should he think of her as anyone other than the real Lady Marchwood? How could a lowly footman from early nineteenth century England possibly detect that beneath her ladyship’s jeweled exterior there was a New Yorker from the future? Indeed, when she caught a glimpse of reflection in a wall mirror, she found it hard to believe herself! But then dreams were like this, weren’t they? The impossible and unlikely happened all the time. She’d once dreamed she walked naked in Fifth Avenue at midday, so why not this?
    She crossed the candlelit great hall, from where a grand staircase led up to the private apartments. She paused in the center of the vast chamber, and looked around. History seemed almost tangible in a place like this, where feudal barons had dispensed rough justice, and banquets had been held in honor of kings. But Marchwood now was a gracious aristocratic residence, where medieval weaponry and suits of armor were only decorative.
    There was a minstrels’ gallery and a dais, and a beautiful carved screen that still bore traces of its fifteenth-century paintwork. The lower walls were paneled in dark oak, above which the stonework had recently been covered with plaster and painted white, and everything was lit by the candles encircling Tudor wheel-rim chandeliers suspended from a hammerbeam roof. A long table ranged down the center of the stone-flagged floor, and on its highly polished surface there was a vase of beautifully arranged flowers from the castle gardens.
    More flowers brightened the hearth of one of the two enormous stone fireplaces that stood on opposite walls, but the second fireplace had been virtually dismantled and was in the process of being rebuilt because some of the Tudor stonework had been damaged. Fresh, newly carved slabs stood in readiness, and the masons’ implements were neatly stacked against the wall. The dust and fragments left by the day’s work had been carefully brushed into a pile to be cleared away by the maids when they commenced their tasks just after sunrise.
    She mounted the staircase, but at the half-landing where the stairs divided, she paused again, this time to look at the wall paneling. A dark square marked the place where a painting had recently been removed in readiness for a new portrait of Dane by the fashionable artist, Sir Thomas Lawrence. The portrait had been commenced before Dane left for the Peninsular War, and would be delivered any day now.
    Gathering her skirts, she continued the ascent. Her steps took her unerringly along a wide candlelit passage with windows overlooking the courtyard. At last she reached the door of her private apartment, and paused again, her glance moving along to the door of Dane’s rooms a little further on. The fact that he and his wife occupied separate apartments had never signified anything, for the rooms were connected by a set of folding doors. Tonight she meant to go