The Devil Is a Marquess (Rescued from Ruin Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

throng of guests and Pennywhistle sisters shifted, she saw her aunt and uncle standing near one of the fireplaces, chatting with Penelope Darling, Viola’s cousin. Penelope laughed, the braying noise similar to a panicked goose.
    Like Charlotte, Penelope long had been a wallflower, though that had changed last season. She now had a suitor, Lord Mochrie, a ruddy-skinned Scotsman who thought himself terribly amusing. Charlotte disagreed. But, then, perhaps her reluctance to laugh at every bon mot and dull witticism emanating from such an unamusing gentleman explained why she was still a wallflower and Penelope had managed to relieve herself of that particular status.
    Now, as Charlotte threaded her way through a forest of pastel silk and black superfine, she calculated the likelihood that this season would be her last. She thought the odds quite good, perhaps ninety percent. She was nearly twenty-three, old enough to be considered on the shelf. Orange hair, freckled skin, and freakish height had deemed her unfashionable and unattractive. A tendency toward clumsiness had resulted in the crushing of many a gentleman’s toes, as well as her culminating humiliation last winter, an incident she preferred to forget. No man, titled or otherwise, was going to offer for her.
    Through it all, she had weathered every ballroom indignity, every jeering utterance of “Longshanks Lancaster,” and with planning and care, she had managed to accrue a substantial sum with which to begin a new life. A better life.
    Was it enough? She did not know. But her victory over her father was close at hand. It must be. At heart, Rowland Lancaster was a man of business, a tradesman, an American. Surely he would come to understand the futility of selling a product no one wanted.
    Halfway to her destination, an enormous shadow loomed, dimming the candleglow in the room. She spun around, flailing as her slippers tangled with one another. A massive hand clasped her arm to steady her. She looked up—a most unusual circumstance—to find her rescuer and the owner of the outsized shadow.
    “Lord Tannenbrook.” She laughed in relief, seeing her friend James Kilbrenner’s rough-hewn features and dark-blond hair. “I thought perhaps a mountain had come to life and was hunting me. I see I was right.”
    A half-smile curled one corner of his mouth. On anyone else, it would have been a guffaw. James was not humorless, precisely; he simply guarded his sentiments carefully and kept most of them to himself, aside from the occasional disgruntlement. But he had come to her defense the previous November without so much as knowing her name. When an obnoxious boor had insulted and ridiculed her, the Earl of Tannenbrook had taken action, forcing the oaf to apologize. He was honorable, through and through. She liked him, and they had become friends.
    He dipped his head politely. “Miss Lancaster, a pleasure, as always. I trust the mount I recommended for you at Tattersall’s is still to your liking.”
    “Oh! Yes, well. Yes, indeed, the horse is quite—er, what I mean to say is …”
    Sighing, his impossibly wide shoulders slumped. “You sold her.”
    Her grimace was an apology. “Really, I would have kept her. Should. Should have kept her.”
    He shook his head, giving her that quirk of his lips. “My fault for not realizing. I should have guessed. No matter. She was yours to do with as you chose.” He raised a brow. “Tell me you at least garnered a fat price for her.”
    With a wide grin, she nodded. “An excellent price. More than I paid.”
    James’s eyes suddenly caught upon something over her shoulder, and a frown lowered his heavy brow.
    She attempted to twist around and get a glimpse, but he stopped her with a hand on her elbow and a sharp, “Don’t. She’ll notice.”
    “Who?”
    “Never mind. I must go.”
    “Oh, well, it was lovely to see … you.” By the time her last word left her mouth, he had turned and shouldered his way past seven