Almost Perfect Read Online Free PDF Page A

white on white gown. She wore no jewelry, but her sort of beauty didn’t require cold stones and gold to enhance it.
    “Now she’s a prime article,” Lucien acknowledged, dismissing her from his list of potential wives even more swiftly than he’d marked off the other beauties. Her vibrancy was just the sort of thing that attracted dastards like Bucksden.
    As Lucien started to look away the girl cocked her head to one side and laughed at something Egremont said. The gesture and the movement of her mouth were poignant in its familiarity, an almost painful reminder of someone else.
    Colonel Egremont bowed. Lucien caught his breath and looked upon that very someone, the woman to whom he’d almost given his heart.
    Cassie. Six years and a simple gown of shimmering pale gray silk couldn’t dim her beauty. Her hair, gathered into a beguiling tangle of curls at her nape, was still the color of sun-ripened wheat. Her fair skin was flawless, her brown eyes ringed by thick dark lashes under gentle golden brows. Her lips were just as lush and seductive as they’d been the year of her debut.
    Bittersweet memories washed over Lucien. He’d been twenty-seven then, an age that now seemed impossibly young to him, and Cassie hadn’t been the usual insipid debutante. For one brief crazed month of his life he’d been under the spell of her merry, impertinent personality, bewitched into believing he could tolerate a father-in-law ready to squander another man’s inheritance the way Sir Roland Conningsby had already wasted his own. Lucien’s delusion had ended when a giggling, drunken Sir Roland tried to trade on Lucien’s interest in his daughter by begging for a little loan, one Lucien didn’t doubt would never have been repaid. It was too potent an omen for the future. Lucien had reluctantly allowed good sense to triumph over a wayward heart and withdrawn from Cassie’s circle of admirers.
    Now he studied Cassie, wanting some sign that she was still the insouciant girl he’d known, only to be disappointed. Sadness clung to the curve of her mouth while worry touched her brow. Lucien was hardly surprised. Her promising season had ended with but a single offer of marriage from Charles Marston. Lady Forster’s nephew-by-marriage had seemed to the world a perfect vicar and crusader against moral decay. It was all talk. Lucien had known Charles in school. Once the boy had a few drinks in him he slid off the high ground to wallow in the mire with the rest of the world’s sinners, especially when the temptation being offered him was gaming.
    Devanney leaned closer to Lucien. Lucien started. He’d so completely lost himself in contemplation of Cassie that he’d forgotten his cousin and that he stood in a crowded ballroom.
    “Although Miss Elizabeth Conningsby is a beauty, of the two I think her older sister is the prime article,” Devanney said, his warm tone hinting that his prank somehow included Cassie.
    “Only if you don’t mind their kin,” Lucien replied. “I tell you there’s no worse gambler than a sot and no worse sot than one who giggles. As for her husband,” Lucien started, but across the room Cassie smiled and whatever else Lucien had meant to say dissolved.
    The tiny lift of Cassie’s lips wasn’t the pretty grin he remembered, but hints of the clever flirt came to life in her face. Something stirred in Lucien, stretching, unwinding within him. It’d been so long since he’d felt anything but disappointment and anger that he almost didn’t recognize the sensation as the hunger, hunger for a woman’s admiration and her touch.
    Devanney shot him a startled look. “Husband? We are both looking at Mrs. Cassandra Marston, aren’t we? She’s been widowed these past three years.”
    Lucien’s reawakened awareness of Cassie exploded into a full and starved life. Cassie was a widow? He tore his gaze off Marston’s wife to look at Devanney. “Are you certain?”
    “Of course I am,” his cousin replied, his