Pleasure For Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

Josie can copy.”
    â€œDo you think that her sisters haven’t tried to teach her to look confident? Why, Imogen drilled her in holding her chin up and not looking miserable until I felt as if Josie were being kitted out for the Royal Fusiliers. But it’s not working.”
    â€œThese things never last more than one season. Remember how everyone made fun of the Wooly Breeder one year? That was Darlington as well. As if the poor girl was to blame for her father making so much money sheep-farming. The following season she came back as if nothing had happened, and people were tired of the game. She married respectably.”
    Rafe sighed. “I tell you, Mayne, I bloody well can’t wait until this season is over. I’ve never seen a girl so miserable. It’s enough to make you rethink the whole idea of having daughters.”
    â€œWards are bad enough, are they?” Mayne said with a grin.
    The door opened, and Lucius Felton walked in, followed by Rafe’s brother Gabriel. “Forgive us for interrupting,” Lucius said with his usual imperturbable gravity, “but Brinkley asked us to make our own way to you.”
    â€œYou’re just in time,” Mayne said. “I’m about to lecture Rafe on the trials and tribulations of the wedding night. It’s been so long since the man was bedded, I’m afraid he’s forgotten the process.”
    Lucien smiled and seated himself. “Somehow I doubt that.”
    â€œAs do I,” said Gabe with an uncharacteristic chuckle.
    And Mayne, looking at Rafe and seeing the smile in his eyes, came to the same conclusion.
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    Not everyone in St. Paul’s Cathedral felt the same mixture of anticipation and wild affection that the Duke of Holbrook’s wedding inspired in Mayne. Josie, for one, felt nothing other than abject misery. But since that was becoming a way of life for her, and she was well aware how utterly despicable it would be for her to diminish her sister Imogen’s pleasure, she pasted a smile on her face.
    It was a smile she was getting very good at. She’d practiced it in the glass at home. She curled the corners of her mouth up until her lower lip pouted out a little bit. Her mouth was probably her best feature, although she had no doubt but that anyone who saw her smiling would think of nothing but her round cheeks.
    Imogen, of course, looked absolutely exquisite. Of the four sisters, Imogen looked most like her, in a cursory kind of way. They both had dark hair, and the same arching eyebrows. Meant for laughing, her sister Tess had told her years ago. But Imogen’s face was slender and heart-shaped, whereas her own was pie-shaped and round. Pie-shaped .
    Josie wrenched her mind away. Tess said she should think about her best features, but to be honest, she was sick of thinking about whether she had good skin or not, when the only thing she really wanted was to see a few bones sticking out under that skin. Imogen was looking up at Rafe in a way that made her even sicker. With jealousy.
    At least she was woman enough to admit it. Tess squeezed her hand and Josie glanced at her eldest sister. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Tess whispered. “Imogen looks so happy, finally.”
    Josie felt a bolt of guilt. Of course, she wanted Imogen to be happy. Poor Imogen had had a horrible few years, what with eloping and then losing her young husband within a few weeks. Josie tipped the edges of her smile even higher. “Of course,” she whispered back. Tess’s husband Luciuswas looking down at Tess with precisely the same adoration with which Rafe looked at Imogen.
    She didn’t even want to look to her right, because the Earl of Ardmore always had that look in his eyes when he looked at Annabel, even when Annabel grew round as a lighthouse. That had made Josie like Ardmore even more than she had before: he seemed just as in love with Annabel as he ever