Belle of the ball Read Online Free PDF

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    **Who is that good-looking, very rough gentleman over there who is staring at you?"
    Eveleen's voice broke Arabella out of her reverie, and she glanced over to where her friend looked.
    It was him! It was the fellow from the shop; and she had thought never to see him again! He was dressed in evening clothes this time, very correct in black, Beau Brummelish, and even more devastatingly handsome. And yet there was still that about him that made Eveleen call him "rough." His straight dark hair was still too long, his hands, no doubt, still callused, and he seemed to be fresh from some wild place where evening clothes and evening manners were irrelevant and faintly silly.
    And yet he did not look silly in evening clothes. He looked rather magnificent, rugged and powerful like a handsome wolf among a flock of bleating sheep. And he was staring at her with arched brows and a significant look.
    "That is no gentleman," Arabella said, acidly, turning her gaze away and clutching her shaking hands together to stop their quivering. She told her friend the story of how she had met him, and how he boldly had introduced himself after that and tried to buy her gloves for her. Eveleen was the only one to whom she had confessed the whole story of her disgrace at the Farmington estate—she and Eveleen corresponded throughout the winter—and her subsequent worries about being ostracized from London company, so her friend understood the background of her snubbing by the Snowdales already. While Arabella spoke, she wondered if he was still looking her way, and then called herself a widgeon for even caring.
    "So you do not know him, properly?"
    "No, not at all. We have not been formally introduced. I cannot imagine what he is doing here, but I would not put it past him to march in here unannounced and uninvited like some—"
    "Well, he is coming this way, regardless," Eveleen said, her voice holding a hint of laughter.
    Flustered and panicked, Arabella glanced around. He was indeed coming their way across the marble floor, and with that devilish grin on his face, as if he dared her to run. Well, she would not run from him. She was not afraid of him; what was there to be afraid of but this strange fluttery feeling in her breast, a feeling she had never had before and could not identify? She would meet him with equanimity and put her nose up at him, give him the cut! That would put him in his place.
    He was coming; he was going to accost her in the middle of the Parkhurst ballroom ... he was going to . . . going to walk right past her! With a taunting grin on his face and a wink of his eye, he walked right past her and joined Lady Parkhurst.
    Arabella snapped her fan open and applied it vigorously to work on cooling her flaming face. She caught Eveleen's laughing look. "The man is impossible! He knew I thought he would accost me, and deliberately walked this way to taunt me!"

    "Impossible," Eveleen said, eyeing him as he appeared to charm Lady Parkhurst. He bowed low over die hostess's hand and kissed it. "Impossibly tall, impossibly handsome, impossibly irresistible."
    Tardy, Arabella said, "If you think him so, then you should take him in hand and tame him."
    Smiling, Eveleen drifted away, saying over her shoulder, "Perhaps I will. I have a feeling it would be worth the effort."
    She joined Lady Parkhurst and the unknown gentleman, throwing one last, saucy look back to her friend. Arabella put her nose in the air and retreated to the chaperones' area.
    Finally the dancing had begun, and Arabella had been engaged for almost every dance so far. She had always had her own court of admirers, and they flocked to her again this Season, complimenting her, flattering her on her looks and new dress. If the compliments were more in the line of how little she changed over the "passing years" she would ignore that for now.
    At first it had felt like any other Season, but then her mother dragged her away to the ladies' withdrawing room and angrily