The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet Read Free Page A

in his eyes, it seemed. Such was the extent of his cousin’s humility and confidence in his own charms, Lord Francis Kneller thought as he raised his jeweled quizzing glass to his eye and gazed through it at the lady. But then Bob was young and a trifle gauche and had doubtless blushed and stammered as he stood and bowed before one of the
ton
’s brightest jewels.
    There had been only one lady all Season to rival Lady Augusta and she was now gone—to Highmoor Abbey in Yorkshire. As the wife of Carew, damn his eyes. Samantha. Lord Francis’s heart took a nosedive to land somewhere in the vicinity of the soles of his dancing shoes, a place where it had resided with disturbing frequency for several weeks past.
    He was nursing a broken heart—in the soles of his shoes. He had not even realized quite how deeply in love with Samantha he had been until she had announced quite out of the blue a mere few weeks ago, as she was on her way to the park with him in his phaeton, that she was going to marry the Marquess of Carew. Carew! Lord Francis had not even known she was acquainted with the man. And yet he himself had been faithfully courting her and regularly offering for her for more years than he cared to remember.
    “Yes,” he said absently. “An Incomparable, Bob.”
    Lady Augusta was of medium stature, slender, graceful, and elegant. She was gracious and charming—except when she was rejecting gauche boys and then favoringmore suave admirers. She had skin like the finest porcelain and hair like a golden sunset.
    She was aware of his scrutiny across the ballroom, despite the distraction of a largish court of admirers and was indicating in a thoroughly well-bred manner—nothing that would have been remotely apparent to any casual observer—that she would not take it at all amiss if he strolled about the floor and stopped to pay his respects and add his name to her dancing card.
    “She would dance with
you
, Frank,” Lord Hawthorne said with faint and humble envy. “Ah, there are the fellows. Excuse me.” And he was off to join a group of other very young gentlemen, who would bolster up one another’s esteem and courage for the rest of the evening—probably in the card room, a more comfortably masculine domain than the ballroom.
    Lord Francis lowered his glass and wondered what he was doing in Lady Markley’s ballroom. It was the last place he felt like being. But then these days any place on earth was the last place he felt like being. And yet he had realized with some logic and some regret during the past several weeks that there really was no other place to be than any place on earth.
    So this place was as good as any.
    “An Incomparable,” a haughty and rather languid voice said at his shoulder, unconsciously repeating the word he himself had used only a few moments before. “You are thinking of attaching yourself to her court, Kneller?”
    Lord Francis turned to greet the Duke of Bridgwater, who was in the way of being a new friend. Though they had been acquainted for years, it was only in the past couple of weeks or so that they had had any dealings together. Bridgwater was Carew’s friend and Lord Francis was Samantha’s—yes, he was, he admitted ruefully, even though he had wanted to be very much morethan just that—and they had closed ranks, the two of them, he and Bridgwater, when that fiend Rushford had insulted Samantha and Carew had been forced to challenge him despite a partially crippled leg and arm. They had both become his seconds, Bridgwater by Carew’s request, Lord Francis by his own. They had gone to Jackson’s boxing saloon to witness the slaughter and to pick up the pieces of Samantha’s husband—and had remained to bask in the wonder and glory of Carew’s victory.
    The clubs of London still had not ceased buzzing with the story, which might have seemed to be considerably embellished to anyone who had not been there to see it.
    Bridgwater had been the one to advise Lord Francis that