Educating Caroline Read Online Free PDF Page B

that doesn’t make him any less common than he was the day he was born.”
    Maybe not, Caroline only just kept herself from saying out loud. But at least he knows how to earn—and hold on to—money. That’s a skill you’ve certainly never managed to acquire, Hurst.
    Only of course she didn’t say so. Hurst was quite sensitive about the fact that his family hadn’t any money left. In fact, when he’d proposed to her, it had been almost apologetically. I know I haven’t much, Carrie, he’d said. But everything I’ve got I’d gladly give to you, if only you’d do me the honor of being mine.
    And Caroline, overjoyed at the prospect of having such a handsome, such a romantic, such a brave man— hadn’t he saved her brother’s life?—for a husband had uttered a resounding Yes.
    More fool she.
    “You mark my words, Carrie,” Hurst went on, as they stood in the hallway, listening to Braden Granville’s departing footsteps. “This isn’t going to come to any good, this mingling of the classes. Interfering old women like Dame Ashforth might find it amusing, but I most decidedly do not.”
    And then he took Caroline’s arm, and began to steer her down the corridor in the opposite direction from the one in which Braden Granville had disappeared.
    As they walked, Caroline’s mind turned over his words feverishly. Carrie. He’d called her Carrie, his private name for her. Why would he call her by his special name for her if he were about to break off their engagement? Why, he was calling her Carrie and darling just as if nothing had happened. Nothing at all. In fact, if she hadn’t taken that wrong turn on her way from the ladies’ cloakroom, heard Hurst’s laughter, then seen for herself just what, precisely, he had been up to since he’d left her in the ballroom—supposedly to go and “have a smoke” with the gentlemen—she would not in a million years have guessed that he’d been with another woman.
    Been with another woman? Good Lord, he’d been inside another woman. And yet now he was behaving as if he had only stepped into Dame Ashforth’s billiard room for a few moments to smoke!
    “I hope,” Hurst was saying, as the sounds of the revelry below stairs grew louder, “that he didn’t insult you, Caroline. He didn’t, did he? Granville, I mean.”
    Caroline, moving as if in a daze, rather like the hero ines in her maid’s novels always did after discovering a corpse in the hedge maze, murmured incoherently, “ Insult? Me? What?”
    “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if he did. He has something of a reputation, you know. With the ladies, I mean. He didn’t touch you, did he, Carrie? Somewhere he oughtn’t?”
    They were once again engulfed in the sea of humanity that flooded Dame Ashforth’s ballroom. Caroline could barely hear her own reply, which was an astonished, “No!”
    It was drowned out as the orchestra suddenly launched into a familiar tune.
    “Good Lord,” Hurst said, seizing her by the hand. “It’s the Sir Roger de Coverley. I’d forgotten it was scheduled to begin at midnight sharp. Come along, Carrie, let’s take our places. You know how Ashforth feels about the Sir Roger.”
    Caroline did, indeed, know how Dame Ashforth felt about the Sir Roger. Nothing—not marauding Zulu warriors, brandishing spears and poisoned darts, and certainly not philandering fiancés—would ever cause her to postpone a Sir Roger. While the widow declared herself too old to take part in the lively dance, she enjoyed nothing better than watching it performed by the young people she’d invited to her home.
    Her mind still awhirl, Caroline took her place in a long line of couples. Hurst stood across from her, looking coolly elegant in his fine evening clothes. His cravat was not in the least crumpled, his trousers still bore a perfect crease. How was that possible? The man had been making violent love—Caroline wasn’t sure this description was accurate, but it had been mentioned once or