Lady Beware Read Online Free PDF

Swin-namer. “What’s happened?”
    â€œYour poor gown, Lady Thea! Quite, quite ruined, I’m sure.”
    Thea almost said, “Oh, that,” in a manner that would have been bound to raise suspicions, and gaunt Lady Swinnamer was spiteful enough without fuel.
    â€œNot quite ruined, I hope, but a great annoyance. Please excuse me, I must find my brother.”
    â€œLord Darius?” Lady Swinnamer cooed. “Not more trouble, I hope.”
    Thea blasted a smile at her. “Quite the contrary,” she said and walked away, hoping the woman choked on it. Then she halted.
    Had someone just said, “Cave?” in a shocked voice, a voice rising on the second syllable? A look around found only bland smiles. She was going mad! She had to find someone she could trust to speak plainly.
    She continued on toward the ballroom, sure now of tension in the air. She looked to one side and a woman’s eyes slid away, perhaps with a smirk. She challenged a staring Lord Shepstone and the young man blushed. She kept walking, because to stop still in the corridor would give the onlookers even more to talk about, but she wanted to disappear down a hole in the floor. She had never in her life felt so uncomfortable in society.
    She searched the dancers, seeing none of her family. She hurried on to check through the line of anterooms, each scattered with people. They smiled, but did some look at her oddly? She saw no one she trusted with this.
    Then she spotted her cousin Maddy, typically enthralling three uniformed officers. Blond, buxom Maddy always enthralled, and she had a weakness for a uniform. But she also always knew everything that was going on.
    Thea joined the group casually, but after a few minutes of chat she said, “Gentlemen, I’m going to break your hearts by stealing Maddy for a little while. Off you go, sirs!”
    They took their congé with good grace, but Maddy wasn’t fooled. “What’s the matter?” she asked as soon as they were alone.
    â€œI wanted to ask you the same thing. Did anything happen while I was away?”
    â€œAway?” But then Maddy looked at her. “Why have you changed your gown?”
    â€œUffham spilled beetroot on me. Do you know where Dare is?”
    â€œNo. He was dancing not long ago. What on earth is the matter?”
    Thea didn’t know what to say. Clearly Maddy knew nothing shocking, and she wasn’t ready to speak of private adventures.
    â€œUffham,” she said vaguely. “The gown. I thought some people looked at me strangely.”
    â€œNot surprising with your stays peeping out.”
    Thea glanced down and raised a hand to cover the disaster. So that had been it! She turned her back to the room and twitched the dress up again. “I should go and change.”
    â€œNonsense. It’s wickedly fetching.”
    â€œI don’t want to be wickedly fetching!”
    â€œEvery woman wants to be wickedly fetching, and that gown should fetch. I wouldn’t have thought red would suit you so well. Madame Louise?”
    â€œMrs. Fortescue.”
    â€œI must visit her, though I don’t have the figure for that clinging style. Alas, I must make do with bountiful.”
    â€œWhich you do all too well.”
    It was meant as a warning, but Maddy grinned. “I do, don’t I? But you can’t complain. Men positively swarm you.”
    â€œHigh rank and a large dowry ensure it.”
    â€œI have both, but prefer to put my appeal to men down to my charms. Oh, Thea, don’t give me another Great Untouchable look!”
    â€œDon’t call me that.”
    â€œThen don’t act that way.”
    Maddy and Thea were like sisters. Maddy’s father was an admiral and often at sea, so she, her brother, and her mother had spent a lot of time at Long Chart, the Duke of Yeovil’s Somerset estate. As with any sisters, sometimes there was discord. In this case it rose mainly from