Patricia Rice Read Free Page B

entertainments. One of her favorite memories was of the night at the Grosvenor’s ball when she’d grown weary of the overheated, smelly ballroom and had wandered out to the garden, certain she’d seen a brownie under a tulip leaf. She didn’t know if Harry had been conducting a liaison or if he’d followed her, but he’d found her sitting on a tree branch in her ball gown, waiting for the brownie to reappear.
    He’d looked quite refined in his embroidered vest and plain ruffled cravat, when all others wore lace frothing from neck and cuff. Harry had a knack for dressing simply and looking richer than any other man in the vicinity. He’d leaned his elegant shoulders against the tree trunk, propped one polished shoe against the bark to display a splendidly sculpted leg in evening breeches, and twirled a rose in his fingers while he located her amid the leaves.
    “I hadn’t realized nightingales wore silk plumage,” he said, as if he came across maidens in ball gowns sitting in trees all the time. “The yellow suits you.”
    “Thank you,” she answered a trifle crossly. “If you came out here just to tell me that, your mission has been accomplished. You may leave now.”
    “And return to that noxious ballroom? Do you despise me that much to banish me there?”
    She could never be cross with Harry for long. Kicking her feet so that her petticoats bobbed, she gave up her pursuit of brownies in favor of dallying with a charming man. Just looking at Harry gave her pleasure. Out of respect for the occasion, he’d powdered his hair and tied it back in black silk to accent the white lawn of his jabot. Since he normally wore his thick blond hair in the same manner, it did not seem pretentious to see him so now. But it was his laughing eyes that always held her captivated.
    “I cannot despise you,” she replied saucily, “but you have chased off all the brownies in the garden for the evening. They know they cannot compare to your magnificence.”
    His deep rich laugh warmed her because she knew he wasn’t laughing at her but at her description of him. Harry did not suffer from an ounce of vanity.
    “I apologize, my fairy lady. I did not know I surpassed brownies in elegance. Shall I attempt to be more shabby next time we meet?”
    Enchanted by his romantic gallantry, she forgot brownies and auras and any of the other things with which she entertained herself. Instead, when he stepped up on the bench to help her down, she held out her arms to him and allowed him to swing her from her perch.
    Standing there on the bench beside him, she probably whispered something unutterably foolish in reply, but Harry wasn’t listening anymore than she was. He kept his hands on her waist, and she kept her hands on his shoulders, and it had seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to lift her face and for him to tilt his head down and for their mouths to come together.
    It had been bliss, pure bliss. His lips had been soft and warm and respectful, but she opened her eyes when she returned his kiss with all the fervency she possessed and saw the red aura of his passion heating. He’d stepped away then, just at the moment when she’d thought to learn more. Always cautious was Harry.
    She’d spent many a night reliving that kiss, wondering where it might have taken them had they been anyone else but two people who preferred independence to the marital state.
    “Christina! You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
    Jolted back from her lovely daydream, Christina ran her hands over her face and into her hair, then spun to find the looking glass. Her lamentably light hair flew every which way, and she hastened to pin it into a respectable coiffure.
    “If you’d wear a corset, you’d have a smaller waist than any lady in town,” Lucinda observed with her critical artist’s eye.
    “In other words, I’m skinny, and you’d have me skinnier. Isn’t it enough that I’m tall enough to be a boy?”
    “A short boy,” her