My American Duchess Read Online Free PDF Page B

seconds, happy to learn that she was just as delectable in the light of the chandeliers as she had been on the balcony.
    She stood only a few yards away, a glass of lemonade in her hand, next to a scrawny yellow-haired girl with a petulant mouth. The yellow-haired girl was nodding at something Nigel Hampster was telling them.
    “Delectable” wasn’t quite the right word. The American had a heart-shaped face and a turned-up nose. Turned up in the right way: adorably. She would probably reject that characterization, but it struck him as correct. She was adorable.
    Except that word wasn’t right, either, because he could see her curves more clearly now that she stood directly under a chandelier. She wasn’t wearing white, like most of young ladies around her; her rose-colored gown hadn’t even a hint of virginal chastity about it.
    Instead, it was caught up under her plump breasts and clung to her body as if she had dampened her petticoats. The bodice was cut low, at the very edge of propriety.
    She looked expensive. Sensual. Complicated.
    Innocent.
    And adorable—all at once.
    Hampster was telling jokes to the yellow-haired girl, even though any fool could tell that he was really performing for the girl who stood to the side. She was looking straight through him, a fixed smile on her lips.
    Trent found he was grinning again. She would be a magnificent duchess.
    “Whom would you like to meet, Your Grace?” Lady Portmeadow prompted, following his gaze. “Oh, I see—Lady Caroline! She does have lovely hair, and she’s considered a diamond of the first water. She’s Wooton’s daughter, though rumor has it that her dowry is not commensurate with her status.”
    Her ladyship swept on without waiting for confirmation, lowering her voice a trifle so that only the ten closest people could hear.
    “I am also told that she doesn’t even speak French. Infact, unkind people have jested about whether she speaks English . It need hardly be said that a man of your stature must find a lady who has a command of languages, perhaps three or four.”
    Edwina must be able to speak in tongues, considering the force with which her mother was advocating the duchess-as-linguist idea.
    “In fact, I was speaking not of Lady Caroline, but of the young lady next to her,” Trent said.
    Lady Portmeadow squinted. “Oh, of course, you were,” she said, to Trent’s surprise. “Now, where can your brother be?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Where did I last see Lord Cedric?” She rose on her toes and peered over the heads of the crowd.
    “My brother is undoubtedly in the card room,” Trent said. He had a sudden unwelcome thought.
    “Quite likely,” Lady Portmeadow said. “I’ll be happy to introduce you to Miss Pelford, and then I’ll take you to meet Edwina. Did I tell you that she began learning German last year, purely for the joy of speaking the language? Not that I mean to imply that she’s a bluestocking . . .”
    Trent had stopped listening.
    Pelford. He had heard that name before.
    From his brother.
    He wasn’t a man who swore, silently or otherwise. He considered vulgarities a sign of lost control.
    Fuck .

Chapter Three
    Earlier that evening . . .
    H er heart bounding, Merry gazed down at Lord Cedric Allardyce’s curls as he knelt before her, his proposal of marriage being offered with exquisite eloquence. Outside Lord Portmeadow’s library, a rainy April held London tight in its dark, wet grip—but Merry was oblivious to it, for Cedric had just compared her to “a summer’s day.”
    Merry had not given up hope that men existed who were as kind as they were handsome, but she had given up hope of finding one. She had finally vowed to herself that even if she couldn’t find a perfect man, her third engagement ring would be her last.
    But now she understood that the old saying had come true: the third time really was the charm.
    She couldn’t imagine changing her mind about Cedric. He was as handsome as her second