The Chocolate Debutante Read Free Page B

the stables to talk to his coachman and groom and then returned to the still-silent inn. No one apart from the staff seemed to be awake.
     
    He felt restless and bored, and then he remembered that Miss Tremayne had said she had brought books with her. Even some learned tome on the rights of women would do to alleviate the boredom of a snowbound inn, he thought, sending a waiter with a polite request that he might borrow a book.
     
    The waiter returned with the first volume of Fanny Burney’s
Evelina.
Surprised that the stern Miss Tremayne should read novels or even travel with them, he nonetheless settled down to read, expecting what he privately damned as the “usual female gothic rubbish.” He was amused and delighted, however, and by the afternoon sent the waiter back with a request for the second volume.
     
    In between reading, he found he was looking forward to dinner immensely, rehearsing the things he would say to her to see if he could perhaps flirt with her a little and make her aware of him as a man.
     
    But when he went to the private parlor, it was to find only one cover laid. “Where is Miss Tremayne?” he asked the landlord.
     
    “We cleaned up another of the private parlors, the one that was to be painted, my lord, and took off the covers. Miss Tremayne and her maid are dining there.”
     
    He felt at first disappointed and then angry. Who was this Miss Tremayne to shun dining with an earl?
     
    He ate his meal in gloomy silence, and then, returning to his room, collected the books and sent a waiter to her with them and a curt note of thanks.
     
    His coachman waylaid him in the corridor to say that the roads were now clear enough for travel and with my lord’s permission they would set off early in the morning.
     
    He nodded, thinking that he would soon be shot of the place and with any luck he would never set eyes on that odd spinster again.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Harriet’s carriage jolted on its way. Watery winter sunlight gleamed in the puddles of melting snow in the surrounding fields. As she approached her sister’s home, she searched in her bag for her steel mirror to make sure there were no smuts of dirt on her nose.
     
    Her fingers encountered a stiff piece of paper. She drew it out. It was Lord Dangerfield’s curt note thanking her for the loan of the books. She made to crumple it, planning to throw it away when she arrived, but instead, she put it back in her bag. It was a memento of a very odd meeting. She found herself reluctant to get rid of it.
     
    Mary Colville lived in a rambling, low fourteenth-century house with many rooms, many stone floors, and not enough warmth. Harriet remembered it being cold even in midsummer and planned to stay only two nights. She wondered what illness Mary had found to “put on,” for her sister dressed herself in various ailments with all the enthusiasm of a fashion-conscious dandy sporting a new waistcoat.
     
    She was greeted by the butler and housekeeper and shown to her usual room. She was told that Mr. Colville had taken the younger children out skating but that madam was in the drawing room. Reflecting that only her absentminded brother-in-law would think of taking his children skating in the middle of a thaw, Harriet, with the help of her maid, changed out of her traveling clothes into a warm woolen gown and shawl and made her way to the drawing room on the ground floor, where thick carpets did little to stop the chill rising from the stone floor underneath. Harriet had suggested several times to Mr. Colville that he have the flags ripped out and replaced with wooden floors, but he would only smile vaguely and say, “Perhaps next year.”
     
    Mary Colville was lying on a daybed near the window. A table crowded with bottles of medicine was at her elbow.
     
    “What is wrong, Mary?” asked Harriet.
     
    “I fear I have a wasting illness,” whispered Mary. “Come closer and let me look at you, Harriet. My sight fails