A Disgraceful Miss Read Online Free PDF

tonight. I’d like for the servants to practice handling the dishes properly before we host that dinner party next week.”
    Since the household typically dined traditionally, à la français , the servants were used to delivering the entire meal at once to the table where guests could fill their plates according to their wish. The new Russian style of dining involved the servants bringing out individually plated courses and was rapidly become the more popular way to dine.
    Charlotte rose from the sofa with her usual grace, took two steps and then, in slow motion, began to crumple, collapsing toward the floor like a marionette with severed strings. Thankfully, Daniel was just behind her and caught her about the waist.
    “Dear heavens,” Angelica cried and surged forward. “Charlotte!”
    “Charlotte?” Daniel swept his wilting wife into his arms.
    “Here now, what’s this?” Julian was across the room in no time, as worried as the rest of them.
    “I don’t know. She’s been off her meals the past few days and now this. I’m taking her back to her chamber to rest while Jiggs fetches a physician.” Then Daniel was gone, leaving Angelica alone to fret with only Julian for company.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    After the household died down and the physician departed, Angelica had been allowed a brief visit to assure her of her mother’s well-being. A little pale, Charlotte was awake and she reclined within Daniel’s stunned embrace, a dreamy smile on her face.
    Angelica wandered down the stairs, deep in thought about this latest turn of events. She didn’t belong, not here and not within the home she had grown up in. How false her entire life seemed when she had learned about her natural family, her true parents. She had only begun to feel like she was a part of this family, and now she stood again on the perimeter, watching as they built a new family together.
    Not that she was upset about the life her parents were building. On the contrary, she was delighted for them. They deserved their happiness. But that didn’t mean that Angelica wasn’t lonely.
    Lord, she was so lonely, she ached with it. She wanted something as meaningful, as fulfilling and consuming, for herself. She wanted to share her life with a man as dedicated to her as her parents were to each other.
    Julian? Or Bradley?
    Certainly Julian was older, but he wasn’t old . She liked that he knew his own mind, had made his way in the world long before he’d inherited his peerage. It gave him an assurance that the other ton gentlemen seemed only able to mimic, like so many brilliant-plumed macaws dutifully repeating their master’s token words.
    What reached out to her the most was the loneliness that was so much a part of Julian. It echoed the emptiness that filled her since she became detached from her old life and her sense of family.
    Would it be possible for two such damaged souls to fill the void in each other?
    Bradley, on the other hand, seemed as boyish and carefree as ever. Interchangeable with the other dandies who had vied for her attention this Season, he seemed unpolished as he postured and jested with his brothers. What did he offer, besides exuberance?
    At the base of the stairs, she paused to retrieve Charlotte’s silk shawl, dropped in the haste with which she had been rushed above-stairs. Angelica folded the luxurious wrap and draped it over her forearm, then headed toward the drawing room.
    With Julian she felt…essential? Complete. Attuned to him in some elemental way.
    Aroused.
    Heavens, that kiss. Heat rose to her cheeks as she recalled the feel of his embrace, those assured hands holding her just so.
    After closing the door for fear a servant would come upon her in her distraction, Angelica realized that she was not alone. The chamber seemed altered in the same indescribable way air changed in the midst of a lightning storm, crisp and sharp and full of awareness. Her heartbeat accelerated. There was only one person who could do that to