Read Online 0800720903 (R) by Ruth Axtell - Free Book Online Page B

Blue eyes stared into hers, a blond eyebrow raised appraisingly.
    Lady Marfleet was a tall woman with upswept hair a shade darker than her husband’s under a diamond and sapphire tiara. Miss Marfleet was tall like her mother, her hair a similar shade, but the resemblance ended there. She wore no jewels, and her hair was pulled back tightly, doing nothing to soften strong features like her father’s.
    “How lovely to meet you two young ladies. Lancelot tells me this is your first season,” Lady Marfleet said in a cultivated voice.
    As they murmured their polite affirmatives, Jessamine felt every detail of their toilette taken in by those seemingly warm brown eyes. Fleetingly she remembered her conversation with Mr. Marfleet about his being a foundling on the doorstep, and almost burst into laughter. She stifled it just as Lady Marfleet dismissed her and Megan with a slight movement of her patrician chin.
    They followed Lady Bess farther into the room. The carpet was so plush that Jessamine’s slippers sank into it without a sound.
    All around came the steady drone of voices. The room continued to fill with entering guests, the black or dark-blue coats of the gentlemen relieved by the brightly colored gowns of the ladies. She and Megan seemed to be the only ones in pale-colored gowns as befitted unmarried young ladies.
    Everyone around them seemed to know one another in contrast to her and Megan, who stood huddled beside Lady Bess as chicks under a hen.
    Mr. Marfleet appeared at her elbow. “Thank you for coming. I hope it doesn’t prove frightfully boring for you. They’re mainly my father’s guests, fellow MPs, you know.” He seemed ill at ease, and again she remembered their last conversation, thistime remembering his words “ugly younger son of Sir Geoffrey Marfleet.”
    Did he feel like an ugly duckling among his handsome parents and brother? Even his sister had a striking look about her, though she hid it behind an unfashionable coiffure and gown.
    “My dear boy, we are tickled that you had your mother include us in your party,” Lady Bess told him. She had no qualms about lifting her quizzing glass to her eye and subjecting him to the same scrutiny his mother had given Jessamine and Megan.
    His sister stood at his side, looking at Megan and Jessamine with frank curiosity.
    Lady Bess’s quizzing glass focused on something beyond Mr. Marfleet’s shoulder. “Isn’t that Lady Gouldsborough? I haven’t seen her in an age. Not since she remarried.”
    Mr. Marfleet turned a fraction. “Yes, it is she with Henry Dalton. She is Mrs. Dalton now.”
    “I must say hello, if the two of you will keep the young ladies company for a moment?”
    “With pleasure,” he murmured.
    Lady Bess was off in a flurry of lace.
    Megan giggled. “You mustn’t feel compelled to stay with us. We are quite accustomed by now to standing about not knowing a soul, are we not, Jessamine?”
    Jessamine smiled with effort. She did wish at times that Megan weren’t quite so forthcoming about their lack of social standing. “Indeed.”
    “Then you are in good company,” he returned with an easy smile that included them both. “Since my return to London, I scarcely know anyone.”
    “And is not particularly desirous of remedying the situation,” his sister added.
    He looked abashed. “Not particularly. You heard the despair in my brother’s tone, and now my sister betrays me.”
    Megan looked around her. “Where is he, by the way?”
    “Harold isn’t here. He rarely attends my mother’s dinner parties. He has his own town house—he and his wife.”
    “I see. Is she in town?”
    “No,” Miss Marfleet answered. “Lady Rosamunde Marfleet is at their country place in Hampshire. She prefers it to London.”
    Megan nodded.
    “If you think I am unwilling to go into society, my sister here is worse. The only reason she condescended to come to dinner this evening was that it is under her own roof and she must eat.”
    “My