Elisabeth Fairchild Read Online Free PDF Page B

satirical a manner that she longed first to laugh, and then to slap him. How dare he stand waiting for an answer to such an insulting question, a faint smile touching both lips and eyes? Lord Walsh did not so humiliate her. He was returned to the dance floor with his partner. Her own former partner, Mr. Potter, had vanished. Her gaze raked over the assembled company. She was no longer an object of interest to anyone other than this stranger.
    She addressed the smiling cockscomb with haughty condescension that had more to do with her own bruised pride than any real contempt she felt. “I never dance, sir, with a gentleman to whom I have not received proper introduction.”
    One of the stranger’s narrow black brows rose theatrically. “I see.” He made no effort whatsoever to suppress the grin that swept his mouth upward and dug an engaging dimple in his clean-shaven cheek. “We can remedy that. Will you wait here a moment?”
    He asked her even as he began to slide sideways through the crowd that revolved around them. He was smiling a contained but confident smile, as though convinced she must agree.
    “I shall be no more than a minute.”
    She did not agree, did not so much as nod, for she had not truly made her mind up as to whether she was at all inclined to wait. No more than a heartbeat was passed, and him swallowed up in the crowd, when Aurora decided sad no real desire to wait for any man after the embarrassment she had just suffered, unless it be Lord Walsh, and he had not lingered to offer her such an option. She turned and began to press her way toward the door, only to come face to face with the very fellow she evaded, on the arm of their host. For an instant the gill flower eyes lit up, as if this smooth, dark-haired dandy had unfathomable reason to be glad he saw her again.
    “Ah, here she is,” Tom Coke patted her shoulder, murmured something appropriate about her unfortunate fall and graciously gave them formal introduction. She listened with only half an ear. The dandy, whose name it seemed, was Miles Fletcher, regarded her with fading joy throughout the exchange of names. His lively blue eyes, as he briefly took her hand, seemed overshadowed by disappointment.
    Their host quit them once his introductory task was fulfilled, other guests demanding his attention. Aurora watched him go. She could not look Fletcher in the eye.
    “Running away from me, were you?”  The young man’s voice was not so smooth as usual. He cleared his throat. “What a pity. I hoped. . .” He fell silent.
    She looked up at him. The charm of his smile was paled almost to a whisper. He was strangely endearing, even when he did not smile.
    “Hoped what?” she prodded irritably, angry with herself. It had been rude in her to try to lose this harmless, cheerful cockscomb in the crowd, as rude as any jesting remark he had made in reference to her dancing.
    He shrugged and spread his immaculately gloved hands. “I hoped we might be friends, Miss Ramsay.” He executed another formal bow. “I am not so pushing as to insist.”
    She was surprised that he would turn his back on her and walk away--surprised and frustrated. A growing desire to give chase troubled her. “ Let him go ,” one part of her urged. “ Explain ”, another voice within her head insisted. She ought to explain. She took two steps toward that end, and stopped. How did one explain behavior one did not understand? She could not explain her rudeness, could not explain that plans had been made to impress Lord Walsh, painstaking plans, plans gone ridiculously awry, and that it was the failure of those plans that she was angry and impatient with--not him.
    He might have asked her if she wanted a drink of water as easily as he had asked her to dance. She would have snapped his head off either way. There were those who blamed her short-temperedness on the color of her hair. Aurora had no patience for shirking responsibility. She held herself accountable--the