Enchanting Pleasures Read Online Free PDF Page A

much like you to accompany me.”
The little girl nodded. Gabby could see that Phoebe was close to tears, and so she gave her a warm hug. “You will stay with me until we find your mama, sugarplum. I won’t leave you alone.”
Buttercup-yellow ringlets rubbed against Gabby’s shoulder. Then Phoebe straightened up. “My ayah said that English gentlewomen never show emotion,” she said, gulping.
“I don’t know about that,” Gabby said. “I’m a bit afraid to meet Peter. And I already miss Kasi Rao terribly. So I would feel much better if I had an old friend, like yourself, with me.”
Phoebe squared her shoulders and took Gabby’s hand again. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t leave you alone. But perhaps you should fix your hair. It’s all falling down again.”
Gabby put a tentative hand up to her hair. “Drat!” She had deliberately tried not to touch it ever since putting it up that morning, in hopes of meeting Peter while looking her best. Gabby snatched off her bonnet and handed it to Phoebe.
Long experience had taught her that the only way to make an acceptable arrangement out of her long, messy curls was to start from the beginning.
Quill turned around from his conversation with the purser and paused, riveted to the spot. Gabrielle Jerningham was pulling pins from her hair. It was falling down her back, long bronze locks rushing in a tangled glory down to her bottom. Quill swallowed. He’d never seen a lady’s hair down in a public place, and here was Miss Jerningham—Gabby—blithely shaking her curls, as if the crowd of stevedores, sailors, and boatmen around her were naught.
Those men were staring, mouths agape, at the delectable young woman who appeared to be undressing in their midst.
Quill was at her side in a moment, his face like thunder. “Where the devil is your lady’s maid?”
Gabby blinked. “I don’t have one,” she replied. “My father never believed in them; he said that any lady worth her salt could climb into her own garments.”
“A lady does not groom herself in public!”
For the first time Gabby looked around them, catching a glimpse of the men just as they hastily turned away.
“I’m afraid I’m used to being on display,” she said brightly. “In the village, my father and I were the only Europeans. My hair was considered to be a good-luck charm—”
She broke off as Mr. Dewland grabbed her arm. “Come along, Miss Jerningham.” He looked down at Phoebe, who still clutched Gabby’s bonnet. “Here, give me that.” He took the bonnet and plopped it on top of Gabby’s head. It looked absurd.
“Miss Jerningham.” His voice was a command.
Gabby gave a little shrug and took Phoebe’s hand. She could put up her hair in the carriage.
She climbed into Mr. Dewland’s vehicle, tucked Phoebe next to her, and then briskly wound her hair into a knot on the back of her head.
“That looks much nicer,” Phoebe said as Gabby stuck in a few extra pins for good luck.
Quill looked at her and couldn’t think of anything to say. He’d never seen a woman more in need of a lady’s maid in his life. She had taken all that mass of gorgeous hair and stuck it up on her head somehow, but even he could see that it was tilting to the right, and in a matter of two minutes it would start falling out of its coil.
And now that he looked at Gabby more closely, he could see that the overall impression of inelegance he caught on the wharf was due to her clothing as well as her hair. She wasn’t very tall, and she seemed to have a rather—well, plumpish figure.
Quill’s heart sank and he drove home in silence. His mood didn’t appear to bother Gabby. She and Phoebe chattered about every bit of London they could see from the carriage. Gabby’s voice matched her face. It was slightly husky, a beautiful, dark, deep voice that spoke of bedtime pleasures to Quill’s mind.
But Peter—what was Peter going to say? There was no way to wrap it up in white linen: Peter was engaged to