Glass Slipper Read Free

invited me. Didn’t he?”
    She hauled her case from the room and down the stairs, leaving her step-sisters open-mouthed behind her.
    Outside the doors to the parlor, Joséphine halted. While leaving her step-sisters behind to seethe in jealousy was a fun idea, the reality was that she would have to face Julien Auvrey again. Her stomach knotted. She had found him very pleasing, indeed, but pleasing in the way one found a poisonous flower pleasing; beautiful, but thoroughly unwholesome.
    It wasn’t that she feared him. What little gossip she’d heard about him reassured her that though he was a notorious roué, he was also a gentleman. He would not do anything untoward or take advantage of her. Any mischief they got up to would be mutually agreed upon, but that did not make her conscience feel any better. More worrying was the humiliation she would face if he did not try to get her to engage in any mischief.
    Ugh, this man! She wiped her palms on her skirt, clenching her fingers nervously. Never before had she given so much attention to matters of the flesh. The man had been in her house for less than an hour and she had been more aware of her carnal thoughts than she had ever been in her entire life.
    Opening the doors, she caught sight of him standing before the fireplace. The chimney, in desperate need of cleaning, had allowed the barest haze of smoke to remain in the room. It haloed him, and the firelight illuminated the planes of his face and exaggerated the hollows, making him appear more rugged than refined. Joséphine thought the devil must look quite similar leaving hell to tempt virtuous maidens.
    She’d rather expected him to smile, or give her a rakish stare, but instead he frowned at the case she carried. “Is that all you’re bringing?”
    It took her a moment to regain her mental footing. “It’s—It’s all I have,” she stammered, then fervently wished she had not told him the truth. She did not like appearing as though she were a pathetic urchin from some grim novel, and it troubled her especially where he was concerned.
    Thankfully, her father blustered over, giving explanations that were both confusing and untrue to dispel any notion of poverty Auvrey might have had. “Oh, my dear Joséphine has always been a very efficient traveler,” he said with an affectation of pride. “Gets that from her mother, may she rest in peace, who could never see the point in carrying more than two dresses on a trip.”
    “The point would be,” Auvrey enunciated slowly, as though her father were an imbecile, “to impress at court, and to be comfortable at my home. There is no need for efficiency, I assure you I will not judge her a fool for bringing what is necessary. And don’t you have a footman to carry that for her?”
    Joséphine bit her lip. Her father had but one servant, the old butler, and the rest of them served her stepmother. She wondered how he would talk his way out of that.
    As it turned out, he did not. He merely spread his hands in helplessness and gave a weak smile. Julien rolled his eyes heavenward and strode forward, taking the case from Joséphine’s hands.
    “Should I go pack more?” Joséphine asked, unsure if she should keep up the ruse or not.
    “Do you have more to pack?” Julien lifted one eyebrow in challenge, a smile touching a corner of his lips.
    Joséphine shook her head, her cheeks flushing hot. Though he did not appear to be annoyed with her, he seemed to have great stores of annoyance for her father. She’d been embarrassed of her stepmother and stepsisters many times, but she’d never been ashamed of her father, and guilt nudged at her conscience.
    “You are leaving now?” her father called after them as Auvrey ushered her toward the front doors.
    With a hand on her arm, Julien stopped and faced her father. “Of course.”
    Father cleared his throat, his gaze going nervously from his daughter to his friend. “I thought perhaps you would stay for dinner. Set out in