A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau Read Online Free PDF

his passion, landscape gardening, a dull topic indeed. And unexpectedly he had held her fascinated attention. The extremely elegant, almost foppish Lord Francis Kneller was part of the same group. Whenever she saw him, Helena felt regret that he was a married man. He had married a cit’s daughter, who went with him almost wherever he went. She was with him now, laughing with quite ungenteelamusement at something someone had said. What a waste of a perfectly lovely man.
    And then her eyes, moving on to another group, alit on a man whom she did not know—and paused on him. At first she looked only because he presented the novelty of being a stranger. And then she looked because he looked back and she would not glance away hastily and in apparent confusion. Though in reality there was more reason to look at him than stubbornness. He was a very tall and very large gentleman. Large not in the sense of fatness. She doubted that there was one spare ounce of fat on his frame. But he was certainly not a slender man. It was a perfectly proportioned frame—she looked it down and up again in leisurely fashion, noting at the same time the simple yet very expensive elegance of his clothing. And he had a head and face worthy of such a body. His brown hair was short but expertly styled. His face was strikingly handsome. He gave an impression of strength and power, she thought. Not just physical power. He looked like a man who knew exactly who he was and what he was and was well satisfied with both. Like a man who knew his own mind and was comfortable with his own decisions and would not be easily moved by anyone who opposed him.
    She felt a wave of pure lust before he looked away to pay attention to the Graingers, with whom he stood, and the Earl of Greenwald arrived almost simultaneously to greet her. She explained that her aunt had been persuaded to stay at home to nurse a persistent cough.
    Who was he? she wondered. She would not ask, of course. It was not her way to signal so direct an interest in a man. But she set about maneuvering matters slowly—there was no hurry—so that she would find out. And not only find out who he was. She was going to meet him. It was quite soon obvious to her that the man was not married, even though he must be very closeto her own age. There was no strange lady in the Greenwalds’ drawing room. And it was unlikely that he had a wife who was absent. The Graingers took much of his time, and it was an open secret that they had brought their daughter to town in the hope of finding her a husband before Christmas. They were not wealthy. They could not afford to bring their daughter to town during the Season, when there would be the exorbitant expenses of a court dress and innumerable ball and party gowns. And so they had come now, hoping that there would be a single gentleman of sufficient means to be snared. The girl was twenty and perilously close to being on the shelf.
    The unknown gentleman must be both single and rich. He certainly
looked
rich—wealthy and self-assured enough not to have to make an obvious display of his wealth. He was not bedecked with jewels and fobs and lace. But his tailor doubtless charged him a minor fortune to fashion coats such as the one he wore tonight.
    She talked with Lord Carew and Lord Francis Kneller and their wives for a while, and then sat with elderly Lord Holmes during a musical presentation. She told Mr. and Mrs. Prothero and a growing gathering of other people about some of her more uncomfortable experiences in Egypt while they all refreshed themselves with a drink together afterward and then accepted Sir Eric Mumford’s invitation to join him at the supper table. He did not even realize that she led him rather than submitting to being led once they were inside the dining room. She seated herself beside the still-unknown gentleman, but turned her head immediately away from him to speak with her partner.
    She was an expert at maneuvering matters to her own liking.