Slightly Dangerous Read Online Free PDF

account.
    “You have cut your hair,” Hermione observed. “How extraordinary!”
    She turned her attention to the other ladies present.
    Well, Christine thought as she sat down again, her person was not to be ignored, it seemed, but her voice was.
This
was an unpromising beginning—or rather an unpromising continuation of the beginning.
    Hermione, the daughter of a country solicitor, had made an even more brilliant match than Christine when she had married Viscount Elrick more than twenty years ago. She had welcomed Christine warmly into the family and had helped her adjust to life with the
ton,
including sponsoring her for her presentation to the queen. They had become friends despite the gap of more than ten years in their ages. But the friendship had become strained during the last few years of Christine’s marriage. Even so, the terrible quarrel after Oscar’s death had taken Christine by surprise and shaken her to the roots. She had left Winford Abbey, Basil’s country home, the day after the funeral, crushed and distraught and quite penniless after purchasing her ticket on the stagecoach, intent only upon returning home to Hyacinth Cottage to lick her wounds and somehow piece her life together again. She had neither heard from nor seen her brother- and sister-in-law since—until now.
    She fervently hoped that they could at least be civil with one another for two weeks. After all, she had done nothing
wrong
.
    Viscountess Mowbury, Melanie’s mother, small and rotund, with steel-gray hair and a shrewd eye, hugged Christine and told her she was pleased to see her pretty face again. Audrey also expressed delight and blushed and looked very happy when Christine congratulated her on her betrothal. Fortunately, Christine’s troubled relationship with Oscar’s immediate family had never affected her amicable relations with his aunt and cousins, who had not themselves spent much time in London during those years.
    Lady Chisholm, wife of Sir Clive, with whom Christine had once had an acquaintance, and Mrs. King, whom she had also known, were polite.
    And there were six very young, very fashionably and expensively clad young ladies, presumably friends of Audrey’s, who clearly knew one another very well and huddled in a group together, chattering and giggling and ignoring everyone else. They must all have been still in the schoolroom when she was last in London, Christine thought. Again, she felt positively ancient. And her second-best muslin suddenly looked like a veritable fossil. It was one of the last garments Oscar had bought for her before his death. She doubted it had ever been paid for.
    “The
Duke of Bewcastle
is to be one of the guests,” Lady Sarah Buchan announced rather loudly to the huddled group, her eyes as wide as saucers, two spots of color high on her cheekbones.
    The girl could perhaps be forgiven for believing she brought fresh and startling news. She had only recently arrived with her father, the Earl of Kitredge, and her brother, the Honorable George Buchan. But everyone already knew because it was the one piece of information with which Melanie had regaled and impressed each of her arriving guests, having apparently recovered completely from her chagrin with Hector for inviting him.
    “I never saw him even once all through the Season,” Lady Sarah continued, “even though he was in London all the time. It is said that he rarely goes anywhere except the House of Lords and his clubs. But he is coming here. Imagine!”
    “Only one duke and hordes of us,” Rowena Siddings said, her eyes dancing with merriment and her dimples showing. “Though the married ladies do not count, of course. Nor does Audrey because she is betrothed to Sir Lewis Wiseman. But that still leaves an uncomfortably large number of us to vie for the attentions of
one
duke.”
    “But the Duke of Bewcastle is
old,
Rowena,” Miriam Dunstan-Lutt said. “He is well past his thirtieth year.”
    “But he
is
a duke,” Lady