Lady Whistledown Strikes Back Read Online Free PDF Page B

been so surprised
when she handed him a cup of tea, and their fingers touched, and then she
looked at him, and he looked at her, and their eyes met.
    And she felt like she was falling.
    Falling … falling … falling. A warm rush of air washing over
her, stealing her breath, her pulse, even her heart. And when it was all
over—if indeed it was over, and not simply subsided—all she could think was
that it was a wonder she hadn’t dropped the teacup.
    And had he noticed that in that moment, she had been
transformed?
    She paid careful attention to the fixing of her own cup,
splashing in milk before adding the hot tea. If she could just concentrate on
the mundane tasks at hand, she wouldn’t have to ponder what had just happened
to her.
    Because she suspected that she had indeed fallen.
    In love.
    And she suspected that in the end, it would be her downfall.
She hadn’t much experience with men; her first season in London had been cut
short by Harry’s untimely death, and she’d spent the past year secluded in the
country, in mourning with her family.
    But even so, she could tell that Peter didn’t think of her as
a desirable woman.
    He thought of her as an obligation, as Harry’s little sister.
Maybe even as a child.
    To him she was a promise that had to be kept. Nothing more,
nothing less. It would have seemed cold and clinical, had she not been so
touched by his devotion to her brother. “Is something wrong?”
    Tillie looked up at the sound of Peter’s voice and smiled
wryly. Was something wrong? More than he would ever know.
    “Of course not,” she lied. “Why do you ask?”
    “You have not drunk your tea.”
    “I prefer it lukewarm,” she improvised, lifting the cup to
her lips. She took a sip, faking a gingerly manner. “There,” she said brightly.
“Much better now.”
    He watched her curiously, and Tillie almost sighed at her
misfortune. If one was going to develop an unrequited fancy for a gentleman,
one would do a great deal better not to choose one of such obvious
intelligence. Any more blunders like this one, and he would certainly discern
her true feelings.
    Which would be hideous.
    “Do you plan to attend the Hargreaves Grand Ball on Friday?”
she asked, deciding that a change of subject was her best course of action.
    He nodded. “I assume you do as well?”
    “Of course. It will be quite a crush, I’m sure, and I cannot
wait to see Lady Neeley arrive with her bracelet on her wrist.”
    “She has found it?” he asked with surprise.
    “No, but she must, don’t you think? I cannot imagine anyone
at the party actually stealing it. It probably fell behind the table, and no
one has had the shrewdness to look.”
    “I agree with you that yours is the most likely theory,” he
said, but his lips pursed slightly when he paused, and he did not look
convinced.
    “But? .. .” she prompted.
    For a moment she did not think he would answer, but then he
said, “But you have never known want, Lady Mathilda. You could never understand
the desperation that might push a man to steal.”
    She didn’t like that he’d called her Lady Mathilda. It
injected a formality into the conversation that she’d thought they’d dispensed
with. And his comments seemed to underscore the simple fact that he was a man
of the world, and she was a sheltered young lady.
    “Of course not,” she said, since there was no point in
pretending her life had been anything but privileged. “But still, it’s
difficult to imagine someone having the audacity to steal the bracelet right
out from under her nose.”
    For a moment he did not move, just stared at her in an
uncomfortably assessing manner. Tillie got the feeling that he thought her
terribly provincial, or at the very least naive, and she hated that her belief
in the general goodness of man was marking her a fool.
    It shouldn’t be that way. One ought to
trust one’s friends and neighbors. And she certainly shouldn’t be ridiculed for
doing so.
    But he surprised