Cut to the Quick Read Online Free PDF

coming to see you!” She folded her hands and cast down her eyes demurely. “Good evening, Miss Pritchard.”
    The governess was between thirty and forty, painfully thin, with a gaunt, bony little face and shortsighted eyes. She hurried forward to reclaim her charge. “Im terribly sorry, sir!” she twittered to Julian. “I had no idea where she’d gone!”
    “Not at all. It was very obliging of her to show me the way to the drawing room. I expect I should have got lost without her.” Philippa tossed her head and smiled triumphantly at her sister. Joanna pouted charmingly. She was dark-haired, and much the prettier of the two. In a few years, she would be breaking hearts all over the West End.
    “See here, Pippa,” said Hugh, “you’ve got nothing to look so smug about. Mr. Kestrel’s being very gracious about it, but all the same, you shouldn’t have been pestering him.”
    “I wasn’t pestering him. I was being helpful. And you’re the one who made me want so much to meet him. You said he was the most tremendous beau, absolutely top of the tree!”
    Hugh flushed scarlet. Julian’s eyes danced, but he had the grace to look away.
    “Pippa, you’re embarrassing everyone!” Joanna hissed.
    “I don’t see why—” Philippa was beginning. But Miss Pritchard hastily said good night and bundled her charges away.
    “I'm sorry about that,” muttered Hugh. “I don't suppose you came to Bellegarde to be teased to death by my little sisters.”
    “Oh, I don’t mind. I rather like making friends with women before they're old enough to be dangerous.”
    *
    The rest of the company was already assembled in the drawing room. Julian had met Sir Robert and Lady Fontclair when they greeted him upon his arrival. He was slightly acquainted with Colonel Fontclair, Sir Robert's brother, who belonged to one or two of his clubs. Sir Robert’s sister, Lady Tarleton, he knew by sight, though they had never been introduced. Mr. Craddock was a stranger to him, as were Maud Craddock and Isabelle Fontclair.
    Isabelle must have been a few years older and at least six inches taller than Maud. She had the type of figure Julian most admired in women—statuesque, slender, and effortlessly graceful. Her voice was low-pitched, smooth, and mellow—very pleasing to Julian, who particularly noticed voices. But what struck him most about her was her serenity. Not many people could sit so still, and yet look so natural and relaxed.
    Maud suffered by comparison. Her face was pale and pasty, and there were smudges of shadow under her eyes. She had a figure like a Dresden shepherdess’s—a tiny waist, with generous curves above and below. Her hair was of a light, streaky shade that was neither blond nor brown. Her nose was small and blunt, with a sprinkling of freckles. She did have striking eyes: large, wide-set, and of a vivid turquoise. But no one had a chance to see them to advantage. She seldom looked up from the floor, and then only long enough to whisper a reply when someone addressed her. Once, though, Julian caught her timidly searching his face. When he looked around at her, she started guiltily and dropped her gaze.
    Colonel Fontclair sat by the drawing room fire, his right hand curled round the head of his walking stick. He needed the stick to get about, having been wounded in the leg some dozen years ago, while serving with the Duke of Wellington’s army in Spain. Julian had never seen him so subdued as he was tonight. London society knew him as a bon vivant—good-humoured and heedless, with a
    fondness for very old wines and very young women He was handsome, like his son Guy, though his sedentary life and indulgence in food and wine were beginning to tell on him. His florid complexion and thickening waist disguised his resemblance to Sir Robert, who was tall, thin, and gaunt, and might serve as a very good model for Don Quixote in ten or twenty years.
    Guy was not dining with them this evening. “You don’t mean to say