All the Pleasures of the Season by Lecia Cornwall Read Free Book Online

her with a smirk, a bully who’d gotten his way.
    â€œWe will marry on Tuesday morning, leave for Kelton Grange immediately after the vows are done,” he said coldly. “I trust you’ll be prepared. You may arrange to have your clothing sent to you, since you will not be returning to London in the foreseeable future.”
    She heard an iron door clang shut in her mind, the key to a prison cell turning. There was no point in replying, nothing left to say. She simply stood and watched him leave.
    Marianne rushed in moments later, probably from where she had been lurking outside, waiting for Kelton’s departure. Miranda wished her sister had arrived just ten minutes sooner, or even five. Her eyes danced with mischief and curiosity. “Well? Did he like the idea?” she asked. “We can go and see Mathilde tomorrow if—”
    Miranda swallowed. “We did not discuss it.” She could not meet her sister’s eyes, couldn’t tell her she would not be going to Carrington Castle, that nothing was the way she expected it to be.
    But Marianne was giggling. “Then he kissed you!” she crowed. “Did you like it?”
    â€œMarianne,” Adam warned.
    Marianne cast Miranda a look that promised she would pursue the topic in the morning when they were alone, drag every detail from her before she’d let the matter rest.
    Miranda felt sick. “Would you excuse me? I’m very tired. I think I’ll go straight to bed.”
    She rushed out of the room before Marianne could call her back. If she stopped, she’d burst into tears.
    She managed to reach her room and dismiss her maid before the tears spilled over.
    She fell on her bed, and sobbed.

 
    C HAPTER S IX
    G ilbert hadn’t slept a wink. He could see Miranda’s face in his mind, and in the dark when he opened his eyes. He had held her, breathed in the soft, tempting scent of her perfume, felt the heat of her body. He’d wanted to kiss her, and it hadn’t helped that he was aware that she wanted to kiss him back.
    He’d been a fool. After listening to Phineas’s concerns about his sister’s happiness, he’d decided to go and see for himself, speak to her at Lady Endersly’s ball, dance with her. He was certain he’d know at once if she was unhappy. A look in her eyes, the set of her head, a falseness in her smile would give it away at once—wouldn’t it?
    He’d watched her arrive with Kelton. The earl had scarcely looked at his fiancée, while Gilbert couldn’t take his eyes off Miranda. Kelton seemed far more interested in Lady Anthea’s lush bosom. All the while Kelton danced with Miranda, he was also playing flirtatious games with his hostess.
    He had watched the hope and expectation fade in Miranda’s eyes, saw her famous smile slip, watched her shoulders tense. That’s when he’d stepped in and asked her to dance.
    It had been a terrible mistake.
    Holding her was the only thing that had felt right in months. And worse, she’d bloomed in his arms, her smile restored, her confidence back again. He wanted to waltz her outside into the shadows and kiss her, confess a love he had no right to feel. Kelton would probably call him out for that, and rightly so.
    He had lived in the shadows too long, thinking of Miranda Archer and wishing things had been different, that he’d been born a little better-off, or she a little less so.
    He couldn’t have her. Not honorably, no matter what they felt for each other. Honor was the poor man’s riches. If he squandered that, he’d have nothing.
    Nor could he ever forget her. She was imprinted on his heart—the curve of her throat when she tossed her head, the way she moved, her wit and her intellect and her laugh. The sound of it always shot straight to his groin. He was hard now, even without hope of ever seeing her again, yet he didn’t want any other woman.
    By dawn,