My Lady, My Lord Read Free

conferred with a colonel whose dinner partner, an archbishop, debated with a pair of dyed-in-the-wool Free-Thinkers.
    Corinna nearly clapped with satisfaction. Now, if only Lord Pelley would approach her. She did not wish to appear aggressive. She had made her hopes clear enough to the severe and staunchly Tory owner of the most exclusive publishing company in London. But the guests gathering this evening were not collected by accident. She had designed the party expressly to impress him. That he had not even cast her a glance since she welcomed him at the door did not bode well.
    “In the three years since you began hosting this salon, Lady Corinna,” Mr. Hume said at her left, “your fêtes have become more glittering by the month.”
    “Thank you, sir.” This was indeed the best yet, two dozen people of taste, talent, and intelligence, drawn from the finest of Europe’s elite, all collected earlier in her drawing room, now around her dining table. Life could not offer the mind sweeter ambrosia.
    “Lady Corinna,” the Italian seated to her right said, “I expect you will attend Lady Chance’s exhibition opening tomorrow. The Greek revival is far from expended, no? No matter what that misguided Gigetto says about the crassness of employing columns of the Doric order in domestic building porticos.” He scowled.
    “Of course, Signore Pistrucci, I would not miss it for the world.”
    “Aren’t Lady Chance’s projects often focused on social welfare?” another said. “I understood her to be involved with Lady Savege’s charity for war widows.”
    “Oh, yes. But she has a fine knowledge of art, as well.” Corinna smiled, but the evening’s pleasure abruptly became a lump in her midsection. She could not miss the Countess of Chance’s latest foray into the ancient arts. Lady Charlotte Chance was a gracious, intelligent, interesting person. Also, as a near neighbor during Corinna’s childhood in the country, she had been infinitely kind.
    It was a regrettable tragedy that her elder son was a cretin.
    As unfathomable as it was to Corinna, the Earl of Chance never failed to attend one of his mother’s events—charity balls, auctions, and fund-raising parties alike. He even came to a balloon ascension the countess hosted to raise awareness of maintaining the integrity of the migratory paths of wild birds. On each occasion he arrived
sans
his cadre of disreputable cronies, kissed his mother on the cheek, made himself agreeable to everyone around, and stayed the entire time. For a man whose fondest pursuits were horse racing, gambling, and chasing women, such events seemed entirely at odds with his life ethos: pure hedonism.
    Corinna fixed her attention on her dining partners’ conversations, but her appetite had fled and the
fricassée
and
soupe-maigre
tasted like dust now. She would simply avoid him at the museum. That since childhood he seemed to have made it his life’s evil delight to torment her each time they met must not bother her. At least two hundred people would attend the preopening soirée, with a throng of visitors entering after the doors opened to the public. She could easily avoid encountering Ian Chance.
    The party left the table and retired to the drawing room for tea. Corinna moved from guest to guest, conversation to conversation, interjecting pertinent questions into each discussion and subtly recombining groups when conversation flagged or tempers seemed to be on the verge of flaring.
    She left the room only for a moment to order the butler to open another few bottles of champagne. When she returned, she stood at the entrance and surveyed her success.
    “You are an exceptionally talented hostess, Cora,” her father said at her side.
    She took his arm. “I enjoy it, Papa. Bringing people together who have so many interesting things to say to each other provides me with a satisfaction I cannot measure.” She scanned his face. At nine and fifty, he had not lost his elegant air. But