Wallflower (Old Maids' Club, Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

your senses? What about Tabitha?”
    Noah’s feet froze in
place, one of them in mid-stride. Tabitha? Lady Tabitha Shelton?
Raynesford and Shelton’s sister ?
    Surely, Shelton had to be joking. He’d
never offer his sister up to a fortune hunter. No gentleman could
do something like that to his sister, or for that matter to anyone
he loved, and still call himself a gentleman. Good Lord, she was
his twin! Slowly, painstakingly, Noah turned to face the group only
moments before he’d been departing.
    Shelton didn’t appear to be joking. In
fact, he looked as serious as an apoplectic fit. “Father’s just
raised her dowry again,” he drawled. “How much do you still owe,
Devonport?”
    Noah told them the amount beneath his
breath, hoping they wouldn’t think less of him for it. It wasn’t
his fault he was in this situation, after all. Not entirely, at
least. No matter what, there wasn’t a lady in all of England who
could have a dowry so great as that.
    “ Perfect!” Shelton said.
“Tabitha’s dowry will clear you of that, even with the amount
Father will insist on having placed in trust for her. I’d wager
she’ll be a damn sight more interesting to talk to for the rest of
your life than Miss Jennings.”
    There was a lot of truth in that
statement. Noah couldn’t pretend otherwise. He’d known Lady Tabitha
for more than five years, since Raynesford had first started
courting Elaine. For that matter, they’d always gotten on rather
well.
    But no. He couldn’t. He
couldn’t possibly use her in such a way. She deserved to be married
because the gentleman offering for her loved her, because he wanted
to marry her and spend his life with her, not because she had a
dowry so large Croesus would be blue in the face from envy and the
fact that the so-called gentleman needed funds.
    Raynesford narrowed his eyes, looking
broodingly between Noah and where Lady Tabitha stood against the
wall just across the way. “You would suit her,” he said in his
typical matter-of-fact tone.
    Noah held his hands up before him. “I
couldn’t possibly—”
    “ You two already get on
like a couple of magpies in a shade tree,” Claremont interjected.
“She likes you. She talks to you. Tabitha wouldn’t be nearly as
engaging with you if she wasn’t comfortable with you.”
    “ But I can’t—”
    “ She seems to suit you
too,” Leith tossed in, “based on the way you look at her when you
think no one’s watching.” Leith eyed him knowingly. “You watch her
the way I...” His voice trailed off, but his eyes flickered briefly
over to Lady Tabitha’s cousin, Miss Faulkner.
    Noah felt like he was drowning in the
sea of their reasons. “But I don’t look at her—”
    Raynesford cut him off. “You
do.”
    “ And she is the solution to your
problem,” Shelton said, pointing definitively across the ballroom.
He had a triumphant smile plastered across his face. “She’s not a
debutante —not by a mile. She’ll bring a
heftier settlement into the marriage than any other lady you could
find. She has more than three thoughts in her head, though I can’t
for the life of me imagine why you care about that.” Shelton’s
expression said that Noah was addled beyond redemption. “And
clearly you already find her at least passably attractive. What are
you waiting for? Go ask her to dance.”
    Noah looked to Raynesford, hoping for
commiseration, but a grim expression of resigned determination was
set in his brother-in-law’s eyes and the clench of his jaw.
Claremont and Leith were both grinning, and Claremont even nodded
in Lady Tabitha’s direction. By gad, they were all in this
together, the four of them. For all he knew, they might have even
planned to ambush him like this.
    But how could they have known he was
financially strapped? They couldn’t have. Noah brushed the thought
away. Whether it was planned ahead of time or not, they were
conspiring against him now.
    Noah shook his head then turned to
join the others