Animating Maria Read Online Free PDF

not you? So many grand and beautiful ladies!’
    ‘You are right,’ said Maria with a sigh. ‘I doubt if he knows we exist.’
    *   *   *
    ‘Who is that very beautiful girl over there?’ said the duke’s friend, Lord Alistair Beaumont. He swung his quizzing-glass on its long chain in Maria’s direction.
    ‘Do you find her beautiful, Beau?’ asked the duke, raising his eyebrows. ‘I have met her. Name of Kendall. Farouche and noisy and pert. Quite vulgar.’
    ‘Oh, I should never have asked you,’ mourned Beau. ‘You find fault with every female in Christendom. Well, I am going to find out for myself.’
    He moved away and shortly could be seen bowing over Maria and asking her to dance. The duke frowned. Miss Kendall had refused his charitable and magnanimous invitation to dinner. She needed a set-down and it looked as if she was not going to get one. Beau was tall and broad-shouldered, and extremely handsome. Of course, Miss Kendall did look remarkably beautiful in that splendid gown. If one did not know her, then one might make the folly of accounting her a diamond of the first water. He frowned awfully. Why had she refused his invitation to dinner? She was a nobody. He had made it his business to find out about her. No one who was anyone had heard of the Kendalls of Bath. Yes, he had behaved badly by kissing her, but surely his invitation to dinner was apology enough.
    Lord Alistair Beaumont, Beau to his friends in particular and to London society in general, was intrigued by Miss Kendall. She was so graceful, so sensuous, and yet she had a dreamy faraway look in her eyes. Maria was still plotting revenge on the duke, but Beau did not know that.
    It was not possible to engage in much conversation during the complicated set of a noisy country dance, although it went on for half an hour, but when the dance was over, he begged to be allowed to take her into supper and was surprised by the slight look of dismay in her eyes and the short hesitation before she politely accepted his invitation. Beau, like his friend the duke, was used to being chased by women rather than having to chase them himself. He did not know Maria had been hoping for an invitation from the duke.
    He next asked Frederica to dance. Frederica accepted gracefully. Her last partner had been the village butcher who had trodden on her toes, and they were still aching.
    The duke, at last mindful of his duties, invited the vicar’s wife to dance, and when that dance was over he moved about the guests seated around the room, talking to first one and then the other.
    He found himself growing increasingly annoyed with Miss Kendall. Men were now vying with each other for dances with her, and then he saw Beau moving forward to lead her into supper.
    His partner for supper was his own mother. He felt very old and stuffy.
    ‘Who’s that fetching gal with Beaumont?’ asked his mother, her faded eyes peering across the supper room.
    ‘A Miss Kendall, Mama.’
    ‘Interesting-looking gal. Out of the common way. Might do for Beau. Time he settled down. Kendall? Kendall? Pushy couple of mushrooms accosted me in the Pump Room in Bath. Bragging on about their beautiful daughter and how they were paying a fortune to them Tribble twins to puff her off.’
    ‘The Tribbles, Mama? The sponsors of the difficult and impossible? What is up with Miss Kendall?’
    ‘Don’t know,’ said his mother vaguely, turning over in her mind all the Bath scandals she had heard. ‘Oh, I think I have it. Ain’t a virgin. Lost it to Harry Templar at Comfreys’ hunt ball. In the pantry, of all places. Wouldn’t think there would be enough room.’
    The duke leaned back in his chair, a smile curling his lips. So the dewy-fresh and dreamy Miss Kendall was not what she appeared. And to think he had felt guilty for having kissed her.
    He hoped for her sake her parents had a great deal of money. Even the famous Tribbles would find it hard to marry off a young girl who had