Pleasure For Pleasure Read Online Free PDF

was, even though Annabel’s little son was only a few months old and she hadn’t lost all the weight.
    Too bad most men weren’t like him.
    But that was veering into a dangerous thought, the kind that led to tears, so Josie looked back at the altar. The bishop was taking an unaccountably long time with his sermon, blathering on about love and forgiveness and such-like topics. The importance of marriage as an institution within which a man and woman loved and respected each other.
    For goodness’ sake, Imogen and Rafe had already chosen each other. They didn’t need the lecture. But the bishop wandered on to the importance of marriage as an institution that cherished harmony in the family and the home.
    I would marry anyone, Josie thought desperately. The thought of the little book she’d carefully created over the past two years, a list of all the ways by which heroines in novels made their admirers ask for their hands in marriage, sickened her now. The reality was so much worse than she’d pictured. She had no admirers.
    She never thought that a man would have to undergo ridicule if he even danced with her. It wasn’t that she was left at the side of the room. Her eldest sister, Tess, if not Griselda and Imogen, would never allow it. She no sooner was returned to her chaperone than a friend of one of her brothers-in-law would bow before her. But she saw through them. They were dancing with her as a favor, and although she quite liked some of them, they were old. They were funny, and complimentary,and one of them—Baron Sibble—even seemed to like her for herself. He asked her for two dances at every single event, and even Tess could not have demanded such devoted service.
    â€œYoung men are fools,” Lucius Felton had told her on the way home from her first ball, when not a single man her age asked her to dance. “I was a fool as a youth.”
    â€œLike this?” she had asked, sobbing so hard that she could hardly speak.
    There was a moment’s silence. “Never like that consciously,” he said finally. “But Josie, young men are like sheep. They follow each other’s lead. There were quite likely young men in the room tonight who would have asked you to dance, but they can’t quite brave the ridicule.”
    â€œI just don’t understand why this happened,” she had whispered, broken-hearted.
    â€œIt’s Darlington,” Lucius had told her. “Unfortunately, he is dictating fashion this season.”
    â€œWhy would he care about me?” she’d cried, from the depths of her heart. “I’ve never met him, have I? Do I know him?”
    â€œPerhaps it’s because he’s English and you’re Scottish. There are Englishmen who resent the fact that your sisters have made excellent marriages amongst English aristocracy.”
    â€œThat’s—That’s not my fault!” It was the eternal cry of the unjustly accused.
    â€œYou are not the only one,” he added gently. “Cecilia Bellingworth will have a difficult time shaking the label Silly Billy, and that’s merely due to her unfortunate brother not being right in his head. Darlington didn’t make up that label; I’m not sure who did. But who will be brave enough to marry her?”
    â€œI’d rather be silly than fat,” Josie had said flatly.
    â€œNo, you wouldn’t,” Lucius had said. “And you are not fat, Josie.”
    But Lucius Felton had no idea of the depths of longingJosie felt to be thin. To dance around the ballroom, gowned in a diaphanous costume gathered with fragile ribbons under her breasts and floating around her like a cloud of pale silk…The whole world could see that Miss Mary Ogilby never wore a corset; why should she? She was as slender as a reed. But Josie wore a corset. If she could, she’d wear three corsets, one on top of each other, if only they could rein in all the flesh that