Not Quite a Lady Read Online Free PDF

Charlotte. “I don’t expect you to clean it. You can feed my clothes to the—” She broke off, wondering what was the matter with her. She ought to have better control of her tongue.
    The stream separating Beechwood from her father’s property was about two miles from Lithby Hall. Charlotte easily covered two or three times that distance and sometimes more in the course of a day’s perambulations. Long walks helped calm her. On some days she needed more calming than on others.
    Maybe she should have walked farther today.
    Molly’s gaze traveled over Charlotte, up and down. She shook her head.
    “Later, Molly,” Lady Lithby said firmly. “Close the door behind you.”
    The maid went out, still shaking her head. She closed the door.
    “Charlotte,” said Lizzie.
    “It’s nothing,” said Charlotte. “I was walking next door. At Beechwood. I met the new resident.”
    “Mr. Carsington, do you mean? The neighborhood is abuzz. He arrived yesterday, I am told.” Lizzie eyed her up and down. “Did you meet him before or after you fell into the pigsty?”
    Charlotte, who had fallen into the pigsty more than once in her childhood, considered accepting the easy lie. The trouble was, her stepmother always knew when she was lying. Life was simpler when one told her the truth, albeit as little of that as was absolutely necessary.
    “He was lying among the tall weeds,” she said. “I did not see him at first. My mind was elsewhere. I was practically on top of him when he raised his head. Then I nearly leapt out of my skin. I stumbled on something…and I fell.”
    Charlotte saw no reason to describe in detail what had happened between the first time she’d stumbled and when she’d fallen on her arse.
    She was trying very hard to forget what had happened.
    He was so…big…and his hands…
    For ten years her physical contact with men had gone no further than a gloved hand lightly clasping hers, or, in the course of a waltz, a gloved hand touching the back of her waist.
    He had not been wearing gloves, and her layers of clothes might as well not have been there, for all the good they did.
    His hands, his hands. She could feel them yet…along with other disturbing feelings, too much like longing.
    But that was impossible. She would never long for a man’s touch, she told herself. She’d learned her lesson.
    What had happened today was simple enough: She’d already been upset when she came upon him. Being upset, she’d panicked, which made her too irrational to comprehend that the man was simply trying to keep her from tumbling into the bog that used to be an ornamental pond.
    She was upset because of Papa’s brainstorm and the nightmare she foresaw of a marriage beginning in shame and likely destroying the happiness of everyone who cared about her: not only her father but Lizzie, who’d deceived him on Charlotte’s account practically at the start of their marriage.
    Without warning, while all this worry churned in her mind, she’d found herself caught in the arms of…a very large man.
    Small wonder she’d behaved at first like a cornered animal.
    Then, as she was struggling to reclaim her powers of reason, she’d looked up into his face. Under the onslaught of those brilliantly golden eyes and a deep voice that set her vibrating within like a tuning fork, her wits had shattered utterly.
    For a moment it had seemed as though one of the Greek gods—Apollo, for instance—had accosted her, as they were known to do to unsuspecting women.
    “I see,” said Lizzie.
    With a little start, Charlotte came out of her troubled reverie.
    Her stepmother had a worrisome habit of seeing more at times than one could wish.
    She was petite and dark-haired, the opposite of Charlotte’s mother in looks, and far from the classic English rose her predecessor had been, objectively speaking. But a great many people, including her husband and stepdaughter, couldn’t see Lord Lithby’s second wife objectively. They saw the beauty