Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahill 06] Read Free

him, too—and then she saw Calder Hart.
    Her smile vanished; her heart lurched; her gaze slammed to a halt. He stood across the room with a group of five others, and a buxom blonde was hanging on to his arm. His back was toward her.
    In fact, he was so engrossed with the blonde and his friends that he hadn’t even noticed her—and did not look her way even once.
    She began to tremble, unable to control it, as if the temperature in the room had violently dropped.
He hadn’t looked at her even once—and she was wearing the eyecatching
red dress
. She was ill. He no longer liked her; he no longer found her at all interesting or alluring; he had a new paramour—he no longer wished to marry her.
    “What is it?” Bragg asked sharply, but she could not tear her stare from Hart and the voluptuous blonde. Bragg shifted and grimaced. “He has seduced you after all, hasn’t he?” he asked bitterly.
    For one more moment, Francesca could not speak. “No. Of course not,” she said, and it was the truth. No one had been nobler than the city’s worst womanizer. In fact, he had made it clear he would not take her to bed until their wedding night, no matter how she wished otherwise.
    But that night would never happen now. She was certain of it.
    “I meant emotionally,” Bragg said tersely. “You are upset. God!”
    She faced him, forcing a sickly smile. “I’m not upset,” she lied. The ring in her clutch now burned her hand, impossibly, through the velvet and beads. “I’m fine.” She swallowed hard and wondered if she could retch if she went to the ladies’ room. “Your wife is now standing alone.”
    He turned and saw that Leigh Anne stood apart from the rest of the crowd, the group she had been with having dispersed. She remained small and angelic—the most beautiful woman in the room. Then he faced Francesca again. “I am worried about you. First this disappearance, and now your reaction to Hart.”
    “You have no cause to worry about me,” she said, her gaze having found Hart again of its own volition. He was nodding at something someone had said. The blonde, who was perhaps thirty, was laughing prettily—coyly. Hart had not looked Francesca’s way even once.
    He hadn’t noticed her.
    Because he didn’t care. Not at all. It was over, then.
    But that was what she wanted—wasn’t it?
    Bragg gripped her gloved wrist. “I will always worry about you,” he said.
    She faced him swiftly. “I am fine. Really.”
    “You are too pale. Except for those crimson patches on your cheeks. Are you feverish?”
    She wondered if he was right, if extreme anxiety had caused her to become truly ill. “I think I will not stay long,” she whispered, and suddenly she felt close to tears. Because Connie was right.
    She had worn the red dress because Calder Hart liked it.
    And she hadn’t removed his ring from the chain around her neck in an entire month, not even once.
    “I think that’s a good idea,” Bragg said. He glanced grimly at Hart, then said, “That is Mrs. Davies, and I have seen them together several times recently.”
    Now she would truly retch. He had promised her fidelity. But then, if they were no longer engaged, the promise did not count. “She is quite alluring.”
    “She’s a widow,” Bragg said sharply. “She and Hart are of the same nature.”
    Francesca felt herself bristle. “So you know her?”
    “She has a reputation.”
    She should not defend him. Not now, not ever again. “He may be notorious, Bragg, but he has always been a perfect gentleman with me,” she said. And that was the truth—until the moment they had become engaged.
    Bragg was exasperated. “You adore defending him!”
    “Hardly,” she said, feeling waspish as well as ill.
    “I have to go,” he said abruptly. But he made no move to return to his wife. “When can we speak? Truly? It’s been too long, Francesca,” he said.
    She softened but kept Hart in the line of vision from the corner of her eye.