Just Another Lady (Xcite Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the fact that she owed him that much in return for all he had done for her, there never had been any other man for Elinor, whether she liked to admit it or not. It was his name she whispered when a certain touch of her fingers sent shivers through her body; his mouth that she imagined on her own; his hands ...
    She had had one night of pleasure. More than she had ever hoped for or expected. She would be content with that.
    Elinor was interested, though not altogether shocked, to discover that Lucius himself was not universally popular. Sometimes she wasn’t certain that she altogether liked him; she was in love with him, certainly, but he regularly annoyed and frustrated her. The ladies of the ton appeared to fall into three separate groups: those who enjoyed his company, and his reputation as a roué, without ever having been attracted to him; those who had once liked him more, perhaps, than they should, and who now regretted it; and those who looked upon Elinor as an interloper, and the only reason why Lucius would not now be marrying them. The middle category was unnervingly large: Elinor wondered sometimes whether Lucius could really have flirted with – seduced? – quite so many ladies. Their attitudes towards her ranged from pitying, through resentful, to out-and-out catty. If Elinor had not known the nature of the gentleman she had married, she thought often, she would soon have been made aware.
    ‘Mr Crozier’s new little wife.’ Belinda Dolinger had been one of the first “ladies” to use her conversation with Elinor to express her contempt of Elinor’s husband.
    Irritating though she had found this expression, Elinor was uncertain, so early on, of Miss Dolinger’s intentions. She had, therefore, bitten her tongue and refrained from suggesting that not only was she not little, but that she was also Mr Crozier’s only wife.
    ‘That is correct,’ she’d said, nodding politely to her new acquaintance.
    ‘We all pity you, you know,’ Belinda had continued with a tinkling laugh.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Oh, marry in haste, repent at leisure, you understand,’ Belinda explained. ‘Your marriage was very sudden, Mrs Crozier, was it not?’
    Elinor gave her a self-possessed smile – a talent which would become an art form over more conversations with the poisonous Belinda. ‘Hardly. We’ve been acquainted since childhood.’
    ‘Oh Heavens, you mean he married a country girl from that backwater village of his?’ Miss Dolinger clasped her hands to her mouth as if the words had accidentally been forced from her, rather than being – as Elinor suspected – utterly intentional.
    ‘That is one way of putting it,’ said Lucius dryly, coming up behind Miss Dolinger in time to hear the last line. He put an arm around Elinor’s waist. ‘Though you might remember Mrs Crozier from her Season in London three years ago, when she was Miss Everton.’ He smiled. ‘Except of course she attended the best parties, Belinda; something that you have never done. Good evening.’
    He gently manoeuvred Elinor away, much to her indignation.
    ‘If she didn’t hate me before that, she’s certain to now,’ Elinor commented crossly. ‘Really, Lucius, that was unacceptably rude.’
    ‘And what was she?’ asked Lucius. ‘I merely shared a little of the truth with her, Elinor.’
    Yes, thought Elinor, a very little. For although it was true that she was as well born as any of the ladies present, it was equally true that directly before her marriage her circumstances had been nowhere near as salubrious.
    ‘And besides,’ Lucius added calmly, ‘she would never have liked you anyway. I suspect the only person Belinda Dolinger truly loves is herself.’
    Belinda’s overt unpleasantness, however, was more easily dealt with than the subtle digs Elinor received from other women. She put the majority of them down to jealousy: she saw how almost every unattached lady – and many an attached one – kept their eyes on Lucius