Anne Stuart Read Free Page B

London society, and the man who’d stood behind her was one of the most elegant. She’d felt his eyes, watching her, boring into her back, but she’d managed to ignore them as she concentrated on the cards. They were all staring at her, and she’d be foolish indeed if she let them interfere with her work.
    Ah, but his eyes were different. When he finally spoke, giving her a reason to turn around, she’d been astonished by what she’d seen.
    She’d imagined someone dark and dangerous, though she wasn’t quite certain why. Instead, he seemed a fairly common garden-variety dilettante, from the toes of his jeweled, high-heeled slippers to the top of his carefully curled wig. He held a lace handkerchief in one hand, no doubt properly scented, and he looked down at her as if she were the insect.
    He immediately annoyed her. He was indolent, lazy, and far too cynical, and he looked at her as if he knew her to be a liar and an opportunist ready to cheat his friends from their hard-earned money. And instead of being outraged, he was amused by it all.
    Except that none of them had earned their money, Jessamine thought with a grimace. They’d inherited it, as she would have as well had her father not been a hopeless wastrel.
    And though she might be there under slightly false pretenses, she meant no harm. Indeed, if she could supplement the tiny family income with society readings, then so be it. It might cleanse her soul a bit.
    She was a fool to berate herself for her work. Helping the police to catch criminals was surely a noble cause, beneficial to society and a godsend to her family’s well-being.
    If only it hadn’t involved working with someone like Josiah Clegg.
    She turned away again, concentrating once more on the cards, dismissing the fop as a worthless fribble. But the man Lady Plumworthy referred to as Glenshiel wasn’t easily dismissed. Long after he left the room, and she knew immediately when he had, his presence lingered in her mind. Not a clear vision of him, just a sense of amused, elegant disdain.
    Disdain was nothing new to her—there was no earthly reason she should be particularly incensed by his obvious contempt. If she had learned one thing in the few years since the Maitland family had fallen on such desperately hard times, it was that class and fortune were everything. And while the Maitlands, formerly of Maitland Hall, Landsheer, Northumberland, still possessed the requisite breeding, their complete destitution made them an embarrassment to all and sundry. They were shunned by former acquaintances, dear friends, and distant relatives, all of them, doubtless, terrified that either the Maitlands’ ill fortune was contagious or that they might request a loan.
    The result was that Mrs. Maitland and her two daughters lived in lonely poverty near the silk weavers in Spitalfields, and even that straitened existence had been in jeopardy before Jessamine had determined to save them. Before fate had been belatedly repentant enough to provide her with a way to use the doubtful gift that had haunted her since childhood. Her well-nurtured gift with a wicked pack of fortune-telling cards.
    She was having difficulty focusing on the cards in front of her. She usually tried to ration her energy—most of these shallow people were interested in three things: fortune, power, and sex. The young women wished to learn how they would go about marrying it, the young men wished to learn to acquire it, the older men wanted to learn how to keep it. It was simple enough to tell them what they wanted to know.
    But that man had upset her equilibrium. She was reading the cards too clearly now—she could see one young woman’s death in childbed, another at the hands of her deranged husband. She could see the madness of syphilis hovering over a young man’s future, and finally she could stand it no longer, pushing the cards away from her and closing her eyes.
    “ I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I can do no more.” Her