To Pleasure a Lady Read Online Free PDF

and an exquisite beauty that gave her the delicacy of gilded crystal—a laughably false impression, since she was the most clever and studious of them all, as well as the most charming. Roslyn would have been far happier had she been born male, so she could have pursued a scientific career. Instead, her sharp intellect was wasted on teaching etiquette and deportment to raw schoolgirls.
    Manners and deportment were certainly not Lily’s forte. The youngest Loring sister was a lively hoyden, far more at home coaching the academy’s pupils in sporting activities and physical skills such as riding and driving and archery. Curiously, Lily had a bold, vivid coloring. Her sparkling dark eyes and rich, dark chestnut tresses made her seem a changeling in her fair-haired family, while her passionate high spirits regularly led her into trouble.
    Usually her eyes were warm and laughing, but now they only looked worried.
    â€œWell, what did he say, Belle?” Lily asked as soon as Arabella stepped down, despite the fact that the coachman and groom could overhear their conversation.
    â€œI will tell you when we have some privacy,” Arabella replied, even though she understood Lily’s impatience.
    When her youngest sister wrinkled her nose in exasperation, Arabella met her middle sister’s smiling eyes.
    â€œYou must know,” Roslyn explained, “how difficult it has been, waiting for you all day, picturing your interview with Lord Danvers.”
    â€œYou never could have imagined what actually happened,” Arabella murmured inaudibly.
    â€œYou should have allowed us to come with you,” Lily said as they made their way up the steps and through the front door. “We could have supported you against the vexatious earl.”
    â€œPerhaps I should have,” Arabella agreed with a rueful laugh, before surrendering her gloves and bonnet and pelisse to Simpkin, their venerable butler.
    Her sisters managed to contain their impatience until they repaired to a small parlor at the rear of the first floor, the only room that had a fire burning in the grate to ward off the spring dampness, which continued their late step-uncle’s frugal ways.
    â€œI am sorry to say that I failed miserably this morning,” Arabella confessed, not disclosing that she had tried to make her case at the point of a rapier. “I did not handle Lord Danvers at all well—but even so, he was entirely unreasonable.”
    â€œHe won’t withdraw his offer to provide us with dowries?” Roslyn asked in consternation.
    Arabella gave a dark smile. “No. In fact, he boasted that we would soon have suitors swarming all over us.”
    Roslyn pressed her lips together in ladylike annoyance, while Lily gritted her teeth. “So what shall we do to foil him?” she wanted to know.
    The new earl’s plan to find them husbands had alarmed Lily most of all. Not only was she perfectly happy with the unusual freedom she enjoyed in her current life, she relished working at the academy. And now Lord Danvers was threatening to spoil it all by attempting to make them marry.
    The three of them had already discussed possible options in the event Arabella failed to change his mind this morning. There now seemed to be but one way to foil the earl’s intentions, and even that would only be a temporary solution.
    â€œI think,” Arabella said slowly, “that you will both have to disappear from Danvers Hall for a time. If he can’t find you, then he can’t coerce you into accepting any suitors he foists upon us.”
    Lilian looked unhappy. “I still think we should stay and make a stand against him. He needs to accept that he won’t be able to coerce us to marry under any circumstances.”
    â€œI don’t like leaving you to confront him alone, Arabella,” Roslyn added.
    â€œI will be all right,” she replied, trying to sound confident. “And I would feel more