Annie Burrows by Reforming the Viscount Read Free Book Online

the kind of man they had hoped she would find.
    She should be smiling with approval as they twirled round the ballroom with their arms round each other’s waists.
    It was what everyone would expect from her.
    So she smiled. And waved her fan indolently before her cheeks, as though everything was as it should be. Whilst inside...
    She’d got out of the habit of pretending to be content with her lot, that was the trouble. Since Colonel Morgan’s death, she hadn’t had to pretend quite so often.
    Well, she’d have to get back in the habit, that was all. She wasn’t going to let anything spoil Rose’s Season. Rose needed her to stand up to Robert and be her friend and advisor, not start acting like a silly, jealous schoolgirl.
    She pulled on her social armour, rather in the same way she would have reached for a fire screen to shield herself from the heat of a blazing fire. And after a while, her smile began to feel less forced. Her manner towards Robert became more natural as she obliged him to chat of this and that.
    Mrs Westerly would have been proud of her. She was elegant and poised. It might only be on the outside, but at least nobody, looking at her, would ever guess she felt as though she had been fatally wounded.

Chapter Three
    ‘M ama Lyddy, can you show me how to press flowers?’
    Lydia looked up from her perusal of the meagre stock of invitations spread upon the desk. There were only two events they might attend tonight. A musical evening at Lord and Lady Chepstow’s, or a sort of rout party at the Lutterworths’.
    She knew Robert would want her to persuade Rose to attend the musical evening. They did not receive many such invitations from persons of rank. Society hostesses were not warming to Rose. With all her money, and her exotic beauty, she was a distinct threat to the chances of their own daughters. And Robert would keep discouraging the ones who had sons who would definitely have benefited from a match with the daughter of a nabob.
    Not that Rose looked at all downcast. In fact, she was smiling broadly as she waved her corsage from the night before.
    ‘I want to do what you did,’ she said. ‘I want to keep a scrapbook of my Season. And so I simply must preserve a bloom from the corsage I wore on the night I danced with my very first aristocrat.’
    As Rose smiled dreamily, Lydia wondered how many scrapbooks had been filled with flowers hopelessly smitten young girls had preserved as mementoes of an encounter with Lord Rothersthorpe.
    ‘Of course, it is not as if I have a posy from an admirer, yet,’ Rose continued. ‘Not like you.’ She plumped herself down on a stool at Lydia’s side. ‘Oh, won’t you tell me all about the man who sent you those violets you have in your own scrapbook? You must have had very strong feelings for whoever gave them to you. For you sighed and went all misty-eyed when you turned over that page.’
    Had she? Oh, lord, she’d tried so hard not to reveal her weakness for Lord Rothersthorpe, as she must now think of him. While Rose’s father had still been alive, she’d deliberately suppressed all thoughts of him, not wanting to be disloyal. And even once he’d died, well...it would still have been a form of betrayal to wish things had been other than they were. Colonel Morgan had been very good to her, in his way.
    ‘It was a silly infatuation, nothing more,’ she said. And last night had proved just how silly.
    ‘But you just said you were infatuated with him. So you must have—’
    ‘I did as I was told,’ she interrupted. ‘It was my duenna who insisted I create that scrapbook I showed you. I think she thought it would give me gainful employment during slack hours when she didn’t know quite what to do with me.’ She rubbed at a tension spot she could feel forming in the very centre of her forehead. She really, really did not want Rose badgering her about anything that might lead to her discovering that, once, Lord Rothersthorpe had got to the brink