Seducing an Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

smile playing about his lips.
    The devil looked across the room from beneath his brows, and his eyes locked on Cassandra’s. She fanned her cheeks slowly and gazed back. He raised one eyebrow and then lowered his head to say something to the lady. She laughed again. They were not, Cassandra guessed, talking about her.
    The devil was Mr. Huxtable. Cassandra continued to look at him for a few moments. He had given her an opening, which she might use later if no better prospect presented itself.
    “I saw you looking at me earlier, sir,” she might say, “and I have been puzzling ever since over where we have met before. Do please enlighten me.”
    They would both know that they had not met before, and he would know that she knew. But the door would have been opened and she would make sure that he stepped through it with her.
    Except that she could not help feeling that he was a dangerous man. And when all was said and done, she was not an experienced courtesan. She was only a desperate woman who knew that men found her attractive. For years she had considered that fact to be a liability. Tonight she would turn it into an asset.
    Her eyes moved onward. And then, directly opposite her across the ballroom, she saw her angel.
    He looked even more handsome than he had yesterday in thepark. He was dressed in a black evening coat with silver knee breeches, embroidered waistcoat, and crisp white shirt and neckcloth and stockings. He was tall and perfectly built—slender and yet well muscled in all the right places. And his golden blond hair, though short and well styled, was wavy and looked as if it might be unruly in its natural state. It looked like a halo of light about his head.
    He was standing with a lady and a gentleman who resembled Mr. Huxtable to such a close degree that Cassandra looked quickly back at the latter to make sure he had not flown around one quarter of the ballroom ahead of her eyes. But this man was not dressed in unrelieved black, and his face was more good-humored. The two men must be brothers, though. Perhaps even twins.
    Cassandra looked back at the angel—the Earl of Merton. He was the only gentleman in the room about whom she knew anything at all. If the five ladies in the park were to be believed—and they had been right about this ball being a grand squeeze—he was a very wealthy gentleman indeed. And single.
    And there was that air of innocence about him. Was that a good thing, though, or a bad?
    And then, as had happened with Mr. Huxtable, his eyes met hers across the room and held her gaze.
    He did not smile. Neither did he raise one mocking eyebrow. He merely gazed steadily at her as she slowly fanned her cheeks and then half smiled at him and raised her own eyebrows. He inclined his head slightly in return—then someone stepped in front of him and he was blocked from her view.
    Cassandra’s heart was fluttering. The game had begun. She had made her choice.
    The dancing was about to begin at last—though she guessed she had been in the ballroom for no longer than five or ten minutes. The Earl and Countess of Sheringford had stepped onto the floor, and others followed them. The Earl of Merton, she could see, wasin the line of gentlemen, smiling across at his partner, a very young and very pretty young lady. The orchestra, at a given signal, played a chord, and the ladies curtsied while the gentlemen bowed. The music of a lively country dance began.
    Cassandra resumed her leisurely perusal of all the gentlemen in the room while the pool of emptiness about her appeared to expand.
    Stephen had dined at Claverbrook House with his sisters and brothers-in-law, and with the Marquess of Claverbrook and Sir Graham and Lady Carling, Sherry’s mother and her husband.
    Meg had been quite nervous about the ball. She had been convinced no one would come, despite the fact that everyone else had agreed with Monty’s prediction that the walls of the ballroom would have to be pressed outward before the