Read Online Season for Scandal by Theresa Romain - Free Book Online Page A

together? Or relieved to extract himself from her company?
    Finally he relented. “Very well, Jane. If that’s what would please you. Watch the lady in the rose-colored gown, next to the third column. That’s the Baroness Walling; she’s a friend to the Patronesses of Almack’s. Very proper.”
    “Sounds a bit too lofty for me.”
    Kirkpatrick reached out a hand. Jane thought for a dismayed moment that he was going to chuck her under the chin, but instead he traced her jawline with the pad of his thumb. “I don’t think she is. But that’s for you to decide, isn’t it?”
    Bewildered, she waved him off. “Thank you. Now. Go—go find someone to dance with.” She didn’t have time to pant after him now. No matter how many nice little things he did with his thumb.
    She shuddered off a heated memory of an extremely nice thing he had done with that thumb the night before. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.
    “All right,” he said, “but just for an hour. Then I’ll come find you. Yes?”
    “Yes,” she agreed. “That’s fine.”
    When he vanished into the crowd, she settled in for determined study. The Baroness Walling would show her what to do at a ball, just as over the years, Lord Xavier’s guests had shown her what one might do—or ought not to do but still did—at a country house party.
    She needed to learn how one acted in polite society. Unwittingly, she had bought herself a place in it the moment she clasped borrowed rubies around her neck and slipped out to Lord Sheringbrook’s card party.
    She had gambled and lost, and then she’d settled her debt. To protest now, if she were a gentleman, would be dishonorable. And Jane was far more than a gentleman.
    She was a lady now. And a lady should always know what to do.
     
     
    An hour and a half later, only sheer determination kept Jane’s back straight and her chin up.
    The end of their allotted hour apart had slipped by, yet her infernal husband continued to take to the dance floor with wallflowers and war widows. Either he had forgotten that he now possessed a wife to whom he had made a promise, or he simply hadn’t cared enough to keep his word.
    Something inside her felt tottery. She squared her shoulders to steady herself.
    She hadn’t wasted the time, at least. Her gambler’s mind had gathered up gestures and phrases as easily as it did pips on a card. Slipping through the crowd, keeping Lady Walling in sight, Jane had observed a few tricks with a fan. The accessory was not, as she had presumed, to be used for cooling one’s heated face. Instead, it was a signal for flirtation or rejection. The meaning was all in the wrist, in the placement, in the subtle way one fluttered it about.
    Besides the language of the fan, Jane had taken in a fair amount of gossip.
    “Yes, but Lady Alleyneham invites everyone. Desperate to marry off her daughters! I believe she’d take a shopkeeper at this point.”
    “Especially now that two of them have fallen ill. Lung ailment, she says? It’s probably smallpox. Why, they’ll be pockmarked as raisin puddings.”
    Yet much of the talk was nice:
    “Have you seen the silk the Countess of Doverfield is draped in? Absolutely exquisite. I’ve been looking for that shade all autumn.”
    “My dear, your son has grown up so handsome. Have you given any thought to finding him a bride? That Miss Selby seems taken with him . . .”
    Or just a simple “I’m so glad to see you. Do come talk with me a while.”
    Jane’s heart had lurched when she’d heard a young woman speak those words in her direction. For a swooping instant, Jane thought this must be some friend of Kirkpatrick’s, someone eager to know her better. But from behind Jane, the speaker’s friend—the woman to whom she’d truly been speaking—had run up, and the pair entered into a giggling tête-à-tête.
    Jane turned away, wishing her name was on someone’s lips. Even to be gossiped about would be better than being forgotten.
    Never mind