The Luckiest Lady In London Read Online Free PDF Page B

lose her mind?
    And then lose her mind a little more when she had to walk beside him, her hand on his arm. Because he smelled delicious—like that first lungful of fresh air after a good summer shower. Because though her fingers barely touched his sleeve, she could still feel the shape and strength of his forearm. Because when he leaned toward her and murmured, “You look lovely tonight, Miss Cantwell,” she sprouted goose bumps everywhere.
    “Do you come to London often, Miss Cantwell?” he asked halfway through the first course.
    She watched as he broke a piece of the bread passed around by the servant, his fingers strong and elegant. “No, sir. I visit quite infrequently.”
    “And where is home, if I may ask?” He spoke without glancing in her direction, busying himself with his butter knife.
    “I live in the Cotswold, not far from Cirencester.”
    “The Earl of Wyden’s seat is somewhere in the vicinity, is it not?”
    “Yes, the estate is about ten miles away.”
    When he didn’t say anything else, she felt obliged to add, “But we do not know the earl’s family very well.”
    The impoverished relations of a mere baronet’s wife did not call upon Lord Wyden at will.
    Others had asked similar questions when she’d related her place of origin, and she’d cheerfully admitted to a lack of intimacy with whichever family they’d inquired about. But it was difficult to do anything cheerfully before Lord Wrenworth: He had seen how dazzled she was by him.
    Her besottedness had meant nothing to him, she was sure. But she was not one to share her sentiments. She didn’t mind letting it be known that she liked the neighbor’s new puppy or that she thought three weeks of continuous rain verged on bothersome. But anything strong enough to be labeled an emotion—fear for Matilda’s future, fear of a failed London Season, fear of another inexplicable bout of romantic idiocy—those she could bear only by keeping them locked away, far from prying eyes.
    But there was no concealing anything from his ridiculously beautiful prying eyes.
    She felt cornered.
    “A shame,” he replied softly. “I know the earl’s sons very well. We’d have met much sooner had you been acquainted with them.”
    She was staring down into her plate, but at his tone, which made her feel strange things, she could not help turning her face, looking into his eyes for the first time since she saw him across the drawing room, before the start of dinner.
    Instantly a fierce heat swept over her. Had she thought that there was nothing erotic in the attention he directed her way?That must have been a different lifetime altogether. For this gaze of his made her think of . . . skin. Flesh. And, God help her, unnatural acts.
    When she had assessed herself for her chances on the marriage mart, it had been immediately apparent that her décolletage needed help. A great deal of help. But did bust improvers, in this regard, constitute flagrant cheating? She’d agonized over that seemingly minor decision.
    Then she had overheard Lady Balfour gossiping to Mrs. Cantwell about her black-sheep brother-in-law’s new mistress.
A flat-chested little thing, and not even that pretty—but I hear she is willing to take part in the most unnatural acts in the bedroom
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    Growing up, Louisa had occasionally been allowed to visit her paternal great-aunts, two sisters who lived in a charming little cottage in Bournemouth, on a bluff overlooking the sea. And by the time Louisa was thirteen, she’d come to the realization that those “maiden” aunts had once practiced the oldest profession in the world—as a team, no less. The elderly women would spy on the gentlemen’s bathing section—where the bathing suit was one’s own skin and nothing else—with a field glass, and cackle gleefully between themselves. Their reminiscences, when they believed Louisa otherwise occupied, had taught her a great many things that Mrs. Cantwell would have considered grossly