Duke of Scandal Read Free Page B

curtsying briefly. “Good sir.”
    He reached for one of her hands and gently kissed the gloved fingers. “I am Colin Ramsey of Newark,though I see you’ve met my friend first. How the angels must be weeping.”
    She shifted her glance from one to the other, and Sam noted that she looked as unsettled by the interruption as he was, unsure what to do or say.
    Sam suddenly felt confined, uncomfortable and hot in the muggy ballroom, wishing he could simply turn and walk away. But she had entered his very ordered realm of boredom with accusations and threats that disturbed him. His entire evening had shifted for the worse, and Colin was as charming as ever in his ignorance.
    â€œLady Olivia Shea,” he fairly barked in introduction, “formerly of Elmsboro, now of Paris.”
    Colin tossed him a confused glance, then gazed back to the goddess in gold.
    â€œSo do you count yourself a Frenchwoman or an Englishwoman?” he asked.
    â€œI am both,” she offered, giving him a more genuine smile. “My late father was English, my late mother was from Paris.” She pinched her lips together and shot Sam a seething look. “My husband is English.”
    God. A married Frenchwoman claiming he’d ruined her. Then again, maybe she would forget she’d accused him of improprieties after meeting Colin, London’s most eligible gentleman of charm. Fat chance, that, with his luck.
    â€œHusband?” Colin slapped his chest with his palm. “You wound me, dear lady.”
    Sam shifted from one foot to the other, his impatience growing, wishing he could tell Colin to get over it and go away.
    Lady Olivia, however, had the decency to blush at hisfriend’s ridiculous feigned infatuation. Or so it seemed to him. Maybe her heightened color was a product of the heat.
    â€œIs your husband here tonight?” Colin continued jovially. “I would like to meet the man whose good fortune is so obviously beyond mine.”
    The Frenchwoman actually giggled—a melodious sound that rang in his ears of true innocence and joy. It totally unnerved him.
    Then, in an instant of time, the Lady Olivia sighed and turned her attention back to him as she gave him a solid stare, her shy demeanor changing to one of pure smugness.
    â€œIndeed, sir,” she said without pause, grinning pretentiously, her gaze focused and intense. “This is my husband. Did he not tell you of me? I am married to Edmund.”
    It took hours, he thought, for her imperious and brazen announcement to invade his well-ordered, calculating mind; hours, it seemed, for him to comprehend the words she spoke and the central meaning behind them; hours for him to realize that in the slice of a second, this Frenchwoman of “exceptional quality” who stood before him had changed the course of his life.
    Edmund. She thought he was Edmund.
    The heat of the ballroom became thick and oppressive; the music a blaring cacophony. Expression controlled, he tightened his jaw, determined to remain composed even as his nostrils flared and his heart thudded suddenly from a dark, burning, surfacing rage.
    She thought he was Edmund. She claimed to know the brother who nearly bankrupted him socially, stole the woman he loved, then left the country ten years ago, never to return.
    This Frenchwoman had married Edmund. Or so she said.
    Jesus.
    She must have noticed his reaction, or perhaps rather his inaction to her bold affirmation, for at that moment she took a measured step back, watching him closely as her lips thinned.
    â€œDid you think I wouldn’t find you, my darling?” she asked haughtily, her shoulders rigid with indignation. “Did you think I wouldn’t have the wherewithal to look? Or perhaps you just assumed I’d no longer have the funds to leave France after taking them from me so surreptitiously.”
    If Sam had been nonplussed by her beauty at first glance, he was veritably speechless now. There