Mary Balogh Read Online Free PDF Page A

passed her on a crowded street. Though he would undoubtedly have turned his head for a second look. She had been verypretty as a young woman—unusually lovely, in fact. She had had a slender, pleasing figure and a bright, expressive, smiling face surrounded by masses of almost blonde curls.
    She was beautiful now, quite extraordinarily beautiful. Her figure was fuller, more alluring, her long hair combed smoothly back from her face and coiled at the back of her head—there was no sign of gray in it. But her face was the part of her that had changed most. Although she smiled now, and had smiled through dinner and most of the evening, it appeared to be an expression she had deliberately assumed. The animation, the brightness had gone, leaving behind only beauty and serenity.
    Livy! She had been only seventeen when he had first seen her. Her parents had had no intention of marrying her off so young. She was making her come-out only because an older cousin of hers was also to be presented and the two families had decided to make it a joint occasion.
    They had spent most of the evening on opposite sides of the ballroom. He had been very young himself, just down from Oxford, just about to embark upon the life of a man about town. He had been eager to acquire some town bronze, some town swagger—until he had seen her and known all through the evening that she had also seen him, though their eyes never quite met.
    But their eyes had met and held, after he had arranged an introduction to her and danced with her after supper. And her cheeks had flushed and her lips had parted, and he had been smitten by a whole arsenal of Cupid’s darts. Poor foolish young man, believing that young love could last for a lifetime.
    The earl returned his attention to the Duchess of Weymouth in time to make an appropriate comment on something she had said. Sophia must be prevented from making the same mistake, he thought. She must be protectedfrom coming to the same fate as her mother. And yet he himself had not even been a rake—not as Sutton was with his large array of ladybirds and just as large a following of respectable young ladies sighing for his favors. He himself had been an innocent. A dangerous innocent, who had made one mistake and had not had the sense to keep quiet about it.
    Livy!
    He bowed and turned away from the ladies as the conversation turned to other topics. He strolled across the room in the direction of his wife and Weymouth. And he remembered how she had been as a young bride and how he had been. A pair of young innocents deeply in love and eager to consummate that love, the one as virginal and unknowledgeable as the other.
    He had been fumbling and awkward. He had hurt her dreadfully and had been forced to finish the consummation to the sound of her smothered sobs. And yet she had turned in his arms afterward and looked at him with that eager young face and consoled him, one hand smoothing his hair.
She
had consoled
him
! It did not matter, she had assured him. She was his wife now and that was all that mattered.
    “And it will be better next time,” she had told him. “It will be, I promise you. Marc?” Even in the near darkness he had seen the radiance of her smile. “I am your wife. Not just because of the church and the vicar and the ceremony and the guests. But because of this. You are my husband.”
    “Forever and ever, Livy,” he had promised her, kissing her warmly and lingeringly. “Forever and ever my wife, and forever and ever my love.”
    Poor fool. Forever had lasted not quite five years.
    She looked up as he approached. The smile that she had imposed upon her face stayed in place.
    “I have just been telling Olivia how good it is to see her again,” the duke said. “She is in good looks. We had some good times together, all of us, did we not, when the boys were small and Sophia a mere toddler?”
    “Yes,” the earl said. “Bertie and Richard and Claude were always her champions against the various