Edith Layton Read Online Free PDF Page A

impossible that she was so popular—though she granted it must seem improbable.
    After all, Camille knew too well that she wasn’t lovely. Not like Mama, who’d been a famous beauty and never let anyone forget it. Nothing like her sister-in-law Belle, who was most amazingly beautiful, nor like any of the women Miles’s friends had married. Not like any beauty, actually, Camille thought glumly. Because she simply wasn’t beautiful or lovely or even handsome, and that was that.
    Not that she was a medusa, she thought defensively. She wasn’t shrunken or bony, fat or misshapen. She was of average height, and though her shape was sturdy, she had a waist and good breasts—at least, the famous modiste who had designed her London wardrobe had complimented her on them. Camille had thought her head would catch fire from her flaming cheeks, but the improper compliment had been nice to hear. True, she also had hips, which fashionable ladies did not, but hers weren’t that wide, at least, she didn’t have to turn sideways to get through a doorway. And it was a great pity that a woman’s legs were never seen. Because hers were long and as shapely as any gentleman’s who was proud of his, as so many men were.
    Her brown hair curled, her nose didn’t look like a carrot or a mushroom, her mouth was as well shaped as either of her brothers’, and they were good-looking fellows. She had good teeth too. Although she regretted her eyes were merely brown, they were said to be her finest feature. But she was not beautiful.
    Worse, she wasn’t very feminine, at least, not the way admired women in Society were. While she could appreciate fashionable gowns, she only wore them sometimes, because most of the things she enjoyed doing required old clothes. After all, she couldn’t go to the stables or a trout stream or romp with her dogs in a fine gown.
    The truth was, Camille admitted, she was more at home on a horse than in a parlor. She could dance the night away without treading on any toes, but conversation was another matter, because she was too candid and forthright, and it was the devil of a thing to try to hold her tongue. Worse, she had a hard time listening starry-eyed to nonsense, no matter how handsome the fellow spouting it was. And if politics were being discussed, she had to put her oar in, even though she knew a woman was just supposed to agree with whatever a male was saying.
    She wasn’t a bluestocking, because she enjoyed sports as much as books. Sometimes her speech was rough, she admitted. But she’d spent more time with boys than girls when she was growing up, because she had more in common with boys. Inall, she was definitely an oddity in fashionable London and had to work hard not to embarrass her beloved brother and sister-in-law. It pained her that she might have failed.
    “Camille, honestly, I never meant to wound you,” Miles suddenly murmured, mistaking her silence for continued insult.
    “Oh, I know that,” she said, surprised. “I’m brooding about something else.”
    “Eric will be fine,” he reassured her. “Rafe will know what to do.”
    “Yes, I know,” she said. “Thank you.”
    She felt warmed. She loved her brothers, though neither had been close during her lonely childhood. Miles had been at sea, trying to repair the family fortunes, and Bernard was sent away to school early. Her mama had little time for any of her children; she’d lavished all her love and attention on first one husband and then the other. Even now she was in Bath, hoping to find a third husband. Camille’s childhood companions had been her pets, dogs, cats, and horses. They’d given her love in return, but no guidance on how to be feminine.
    Still, for a wonder, no man had ever run screaming from her. Just the reverse, she thought smugly. She’d garnered her share of offers even before her brother had made enough money for her formal come-out and had already gotten five decent offers of marriage in this her first