How To Rescue A Rake (Book Club Belles Society 3) Read Online Free PDF

her prime, her consequence was naturally diminished and she slipped further down the order of precedence with each passing year. No one would listen to her advice.
    It was young Sarah who made a valiant effort to steer the conversation back into pleasanter territory. Glancing at Lucy’s even redder face and tightly pursed lips, she said, “But I must tell you more about the dance. Oh, and Samuel Hardacre was there, Lucy, in a very smart new coat and asking about you.”
    “I am also heartily sick of that subject,” Lucy snapped. “Since I wasn’t there, but forced instead to sit home in black ribbons and eat flat, burnt scones, what does it matter to me that you danced so many times that you wore out your slippers? Or that a man who smells of damp wood chippings, has rough hands, and wears his hair too long asked after me? I am quite sure I wouldn’t give a sixpence for that dreary, oafish carpenter, and you may have him for all I care.”
    “But I don’t want—”
    “Oh no! Of course the village carpenter is not good enough for a Wainwright, is he? I, however, the daughter of a lowly tavern keeper, can expect to get nothing better.”
    “Lucy, I’m sure Sarah didn’t mean to—”
    “Go on then, rub salt in my wound! Remind me again that I was not there while you danced with every eligible man in the county! That I am almost one-and-twenty ”—she emphasized the number by pressing a fist to her heart, as if it cost her blood to say it—“and should be out finding a husband. Yet I am stuck at home every night in mourning for a woman who despised me. I have no prospect of any good company or handsome bachelors in sight. I have no escape! I suppose you will finally feel sorry for me when I too am twenty-seven, have lost all my opportunities, all my looks, and am destined to die an old maid.”
    As her tirade drew to a shuddering, impassioned halt, every other eye in the room turned sheepishly toward Diana. Three teacups were hastily raised in unison. A fourth—Lucy’s—was merely banged about in its saucer, for she was too caught up in her own problems to realize that mentioning the specific age of twenty-seven was sufficient for everyone present to know whom she meant.
    Diana felt a headache coming on again. Or perhaps it was the same one from last night and it had not yet left. “Shall we turn our attention to the book then?” she asked.
    They all hurriedly agreed and Diana gave another small sigh of relief when Sarah opened their borrowed copy of Persuasion and began to read aloud.
    He was at that time a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Anne an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling. Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love.
    Diana, once previously resolved to avoid memories of Nathaniel today, now found thoughts of that reckless man thrown into her path again.
    Should she mention seeing him at the dance in Manderson? If his sister later discovered he was there, would it not look strange that she kept the information to herself? But raising the subject seemed a challenging prospect. Until she had actually laid eyes on him yesterday evening, she had not known how his return would affect her.
    Her pulse, she had found, still changed its rhythm in his presence and threatened to embarrass her.
    He annoyed her so, made her nervous, made her forget her composure. There was also, so she’d discovered, a twinge of…regret.
    It made no sense.
    She’d turned down his marriage proposal for very sound, practical reasons, and even if she had suffered some vexing, nervous emotion the next morning, his swift abandonment of the village immediately after suggested that he’d come to his sober senses,