In Want of a Wife? Read Online Free PDF

She rallied her fighting spirit at the thought of that and took a swig of her drink, white wine which had become tepid over the course of the hour.
    ‘Are you having a good time?’ She greeted him coolly when he was finally standing in front of her, affording her the sort of undiluted attention that made her pulses race.
    Louis took his time answering. ‘It’s always illuminating to watch and observe.’
    ‘Watch and observe? You mean in the way a scientist watches and observes bacteria on a Petri dish?’
    ‘You’re very different from your sisters.’
    Lizzy’s eyes narrowed. ‘How so?’
    ‘Well, your two younger ones are obviously party animals without a care in the world, and Rose …’
    ‘What about Rose?’
    ‘Very sweet-tempered, or at least that’s the image she’s trying to project.’
    Lizzy bristled, but before she could jump in with a suitable retort he was talking again, his voice a low, lazy drawl, his incredibly dark eyes roving over her flushed, angry face.
    ‘And your mother seems delighted with the fact that she’s going out with Nicholas. In fact, I think she can hear wedding bells in the air … True or false?’
    Lizzy tried not to grimace. Gracie Sharp had always aspiredto financial security. She had been the driving hand behind their father’s work ethic, always pushing him to go a little further, do a little better and aim a little higher, and Lizzy could understand that. In fact, she could feel a grudging empathy, because her mother had grown up in a series of foster homes, relying on her looks to pull her through in the absence of any real education. She had duly chosen to launch herself into the world of acting, but it had been a struggle, and one she had from all accounts abandoned the day she had met their father. The legacy of poverty had lived on, however, so was it any wonder that she was now thrilled with Nicholas? At least one of her daughters was achieving what she had supposedly been born to achieve.
    ‘All mothers can’t help but think about their kids, um, finding happiness …’ She wished he would move back a little, so that there was some chance their conversation would be interrupted. But his stance repelled anyone who might want to join them, broad back to the room, and she wondered whether it was deliberate.
    ‘Really? She didn’t seem all that bothered by the fact that there’s no guy in
your
life.’
    ‘You
asked
her about me? You were
prying
into my life behind my back?’ Her eyes glittered with outrage and she clenched her fists as he returned her angry gaze calmly.
    ‘There was no real need to pry,’ Louis said with an elegant shrug. ‘Your mother seems very forthcoming. I’ve heard all about your younger sisters and their hectic social lives, and Vivian and her causes, and Rose, who is apparently as close to perfection as any human being could reasonably aspire to be. And your mother just wishes that they would settle down with the right men. And then there’s you—clever, ambitious—and there was no hint that finding the right man was on your mother’s wish-list. Why do you think that was?’
    Having watched and listened, Louis had reached certain conclusions, and conclusion number one was that he had beenone-hundred percent correct in his assumption that the Sharps were fortune hunters. Everything backed him up, from Mrs Sharp’s obvious delight in her daughter’s so-called match, to Rose herself, who was the picture of gentle innocence, but who was also seemingly lacking in the sort of passion he would have expected to see in a woman in love.
    He had made his way over to Lizzy because he had intended on pinning her to the wall. Inexplicably, he now found himself distracted and, even more inexplicably, enjoying his moment of distraction.
    ‘I don’t see that my private life is any of your business,’ Lizzy muttered, on the back foot and hating him for it.
    ‘So how come you’re not involved with anyone?’ He swirled his drink and