Miss Armistead Makes Her Choice Read Online Free PDF Page A

insist; I was thinking on my
modiste
appointment on the morrow.” She inclined her head. “Pray tell, does that enchant as expected?”
    “Yes, indeed!” he replied with relish, the spots on his cheeks turning white against his reddening skin. “Though I can’t envisage how a new gown might possibly improve your appearance one whit.”
    “If you say so, but I am persuaded the opinion of my betrothed will differ when I don my new gown for our wedding.”
    His face turned red to the roots of his hair, most likely due to the fact that he had taken a deep breath which he held between his enlarged cheeks.
    “Lord Northrup, you mustn’t take on, so. Your petulance very well may be observed by any number of young ladies, all of them currently most eager to be courted by you,” she said with a kind smile.
    “Not one of them can hope to outshine you,” he blurted out on a gust of air. “You are the most beautiful girl in the room!”
    “If you say so,” she replied tonelessly. “However, let us speak of you. I imagine that your mother, on any number of occasions, has led you to believe you deserve the very best of everything. And who is to say she is wrong? Certainly not I. However, I am persuaded you ought to pursue a younger lady if it is marriage you are considering.” Elizabeth peered about the room, her gaze comingto rest on a very sweet-looking debutante with masses of dark hair, and a pair of fine gray eyes. “Why, I believe she will do very nicely. You must ask her to dance the next set,” Elizabeth insisted as she inclined her head in the direction of the dark-haired ingénue.
    Lord Northrup turned his head in the direction Elizabeth indicated and grimaced. “By that you would mean Miss Analisa Lloyd-Jones. She is fair enough, I suppose.”
    “Miss Lloyd-Jones; but of course!” Elizabeth wished to pose a dozen impolite questions of Lord Northrup, every one of them concerning Mr. Lloyd-Jones, but she managed to tamp down her desire. “She seems utterly charming.”
    “Perhaps, but she is just out of the schoolroom. I don’t trail after children, I would have you know,” he insisted with a fractious air.
    “And you left . . ?”
    “Eton,” he supplied readily enough.
    “How long ago?”
    Lord Northrup had the presence of mind to hang his head. “I have only just taken my final exams. M’ father promises he shall send me to the Continent for my grand tour when the season is up and says that I shall come home a man,” he added, his former bravado returned in full.
    “Miss Lloyd-Jones isn’t likely to wait on you,” Elizabeth noted as she watched the two gentlemen who even now fluttered about the girl like a pair of butterflies.
    Lord Northrup followed her gaze and uttered a grunt. “He would never allow such if he were here to see.”
    “He?” she asked, tantalized.
    “Her brother, of course. I have never laid eyes on her except when he was hovering around her like a suit of armor.”
    “In that case, it is passing strange that he is not in attendance,” Elizabeth mused.
    “I can’t think why he should miss one of his sister’s very first balls but, as you can see, he is notpresent.”
    It was then that Elizabeth remembered Mr. Lloyd-Jones’ claim to have given up the entertainments of the season. She had thought it a polite fiction but perhaps she was mistaken. Whether it was the truth or he stayed away to reinforce the lie, she found it intriguing. Once a man had looked at her the way Mr. Lloyd-Jones had, there was no being shed of him. And yet, he was not present, in spite of his sister’s circumstances. She found the idea vastly pleasant and a vision of his exceptionally light gray eyes, heavily fringed with dusky lashes,
would
rise, unbidden, into her mind.
    “Am I wrong to presume his absence to be singular?”
    “Yes, it is. It was just a fortnight ago that he was seen out and about with his intended, Miss Cecily Ponsonby.”
    “How very intriguing.” Elizabeth was grateful