Winning the Wallflower: A Novella Read Online Free PDF Page A

white with the fear that he had almost lost her . . .
    And after their meeting, her daydreaming only grew worse. They didn’t seem to have much to talk about, so Lucy had stolen looks under her lashes and gone back to imagining the life of a pirate’s beloved, with Ravensthorpe playing the key role of pirate.
    It hardly needed to be said that pirates didn’t sit politely in the parlor, drinking cups of tea and exchanging commonplaces with one’s mother in utterly colorless tones. Pirates lusted . They risked life and limb and sanity to keep their future wives safe. They were possessive, and desirous, and fierce.
    Only an idiot would think that Ravensthorpe felt anything of that kind toward her.
    It was easy to spot him now, across the ballroom; he stood almost a head taller than most of the men present. His face was refined, but somehow chilly. His mouth was beautifully shaped, but she could scarcely imagine a softening, a loving smile appearing there.
    Impossible. His utter lack of emotion seemed to be ingrained, as much a part of him as those clever eyes, eyes that catalogued her every twitch—without comment.
    Lucy sighed. Even if Ravensthorpe was manifestly no pirate, he was still the only man in London who made her feel feverish at the very sight of him.
    Humiliating or not, she would have to force him to kiss her. If she didn’t, he would move on to the next lady who happened to dance with him.
    She couldn’t bear the prospect of marrying a man who came only up to her chin, and after that spending her life watching Ravensthorpe smiling at another woman. Not that she’d ever seen him smile at a woman.
    Lucy took a deep breath, patted her hair into place, and snapped open her fan. She had a pirate side—or so she told herself; she was certainly tall enough to be one. If nothing else, she could launch herself at Ravensthorpe and knock him to the ground when she knew Olivia and Mrs. Lytton were within eyesight.
    The idea was so appalling that it had merit.

 
    C HAPTER F IVE
     
    C yrus was walking around the perimeter of the ballroom, keeping an eye out for his fiancée (or was she? He was no longer certain), when a voice broke into his thoughts.
    “Well, if it isn’t the junior solicitor himself.”
    “Your Grace,” Cyrus said to the Duke of Pole, refusing as always to display anything but the greatest courtesy toward the man he loathed most in the world—his cousin.
    There was a distinct resemblance between the two cousins: both Pole and Cyrus possessed naturally muscled physiques—though Pole seemed to have stopped growing upwards at around seventeen—and aristocratic noses that harkened back to the medieval first duke. But to Cyrus’s mind, any resemblance stopped there. Pole was a bad-tempered and rash gambler, a man with a reckless streak so wide that he had lost everything, even the family estate, to debt.
    The duke did not bother to return Cyrus’s greeting. And, as ever, he didn’t care who witnessed his flagrant discourtesies. He believed his title would protect him from censure, and seemingly, it had. No one wanted to make enemies with a duke.
    “Imagine my surprise,” he drawled. “In an hour or so I’m to dance with the leaning Tower of Pisa, except someone gilded her pillars overnight, so it’s not a dead loss.”
    Cyrus felt his hands curl toward fists. But he did not approve of physical violence in any form; he’d had enough of that as a schoolboy. He relaxed his hands, very deliberately. “I’m afraid I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re saying, Cousin .”
    Sure enough, at this most informal address, a ruddy color spread up Pole’s rather thick neck. He couldn’t bear being acknowledged as a relative. Now he gave a short laugh. “I’m talking about Miss Lucy Towerton . The woman desperate enough to agree to marry you, though now that she’s no longer so desperate, you’ll have to find another woman who will weigh your money against your bloodlines. Or the lack