Read Online The Wicked Wedding of Miss Ellie Vyne by Jayne Fresina - Free Book Online Page A

they pull teeth.” Still, she hesitated, feeling every eye upon her already—everyone waiting to scorn something about her. Sometimes she was able to overcome her self-conscious fears; sometimes, like tonight, when fate seemed determined to work against her, Ellie’s courage failed.
    “Do you really care what they think, Vyne? I thought you were braver than that.”
    “That’s easy for you to say, Hartley. You haven’t got trifle on your behind.”
    “Aha! But I have had an ink moustache, thanks to you.” His eyes were very blue in the candlelight. “So this will make us even.”
    Even? Apparently he chose to forget the insults he’d once thrown her way so casually over his shoulder. They were a long way from even.
    But he tempted her now with dancing, and Ellie loved to dance. So far—before the rip and the stain occurred—she had enjoyed only two partners that evening: a boy with pimples, a grievous squint, and two left feet; and an elderly, highly inebriated gentleman, who seemed to have a great deal more than the requisite two hands and whose breath entered a room half an hour before he did. Now she could relish the shallow, sinful pleasure of a handsome partner—even if he was arrogant as the day was long—and enjoy the envious glances of those other women, for in their fevered minds, her stock rose the moment this rake noticed her.
    Countless hordes of young, hopeful ladies crammed themselves into parties like this one, just to fling themselves at James. For many, his wicked reputation, while it should have been a warning, was merely incitement. Naïve girls thought they could take him in hand, make him change his ways. They saw James Hartley as a challenge. Ellie blamed it on romantic novels.
    “Let them all look,” he whispered. “Now they’ll have something worthwhile to talk about for once.” He gave Ellie a brief smile that further surprised her. “You might even start a new fashion.”
    She made up her mind to be bold. If James Hartley didn’t care that her gown was torn and she had custard on her rear, why should she?
    As they joined the other couples, there were no words immediately exchanged. She’d let him speak first. In Ellie’s experience, there was never anything very enlightening to be learned from a gentleman’s conversation while dancing. Subjects were limited to the weather, the state of the roads, or any other inane topic regarded as harmless, not likely to offend, but guaranteed to bore her stockings rigid. However, she had promised Charlotte to listen this time.
    Speaking of her sisters…her gaze casually moved over the guests and settled on their astonished, anxious faces staring at her from the drawing-room doorway. Their ringlets twitched violently. She thought she just made out the words Typical and Will she never learn? formed by the peevish arch and snap of her sisters’ lips. They even tried signaling to her with frantic little flips of a fan, gestures more appropriate for an errant child or a naughty puppy. They wanted her to put James Hartley down, stop playing with him at once, and come to heel. As if she’d just dug him up out of the garden and dragged him inside.
    She smiled at them. It was their idea to make her attend this party, when all she’d wanted was to stay in and watch her “middle-aged” bosom continue to expand.
    But then her gaze wandered away from her sisters and tripped clumsily over another familiar face in the crush of dancing couples.
    Oh, Lord! There was Walter Winthorne, who had the dubious honor of being her very first fiancé. Now wedded to another, he usually avoided Ellie, with a sympathetic, condescending manner that suggested it was for her own health. She sometimes wondered if he feared she might attempt bodily harm to herself with an oyster fork simply because he switched his affections to another woman nine years ago. Tonight, when he saw her dancing with James Hartley, a glimmer of surprise then irritation passed quickly over