Beguiling the Beauty by Sherry Thomas Read Free Book Online

bystander in her own mind, witnessing the events as if they were happening to a stranger a continent away, and marveling that she should be so removed.
     
    The first crack in her detachment came three days before they were to leave for New York. She woke up in the middle of that night, her heart pounding, wanting to destroy something. Everything.
     
    By the time Helena and Millie awoke she was already packed and dressed, her portmanteau strapped to the boot of a hired carriage. If she were to scream and smash things, she didn’t want her family to see her.
     
    “I’ve decided to go ahead to New York and facilitate your arrival,” she said.
     
    Helena and Millie looked at each other. In this day and age, all one needed was a decent guidebook and access to a telegraph office to make travel arrangements. There was no need to send a scout ahead to thoroughly modern New York, especially as they’d already applied for and received reservations in one of the best hotels in town.
     
    Helena began, “We can come with—”
     
    “No!” Venetia winced at the harshness of her refusal. She took a deep breath. “I’d like to go by myself.”
     
    “Are you sure about this?” Millie asked hesitantly.
     
    “Quite. And don’t look so downcast—it will only be two days before you see me again.”
     
    But they did look downcast, dismayed, and anxious. They wanted to keep her near and protect her. Some hurts, however, were beyond the protection of sisterly love and some wounds better licked in dark, lonely caves.
     
    “I’d better hurry,” she said. “Or I’ll miss my train.”
     
    V enetia had once thought she’d made peace with Tony’s memories. She’d lied to herself. There had never been peace, only a tenuous truce with him forever silent and her studiously avoiding the subject.
    And now even that truce had been undone. As her train sped south, she stared at the still-frozen landscape rushing by, while a bewildered, plaintive voice in her head kept repeating the same question.
Why had you said such things to Lexington, Tony, why?
     
    It’s simple enough, you idiot. He
wanted
someone to believe you were responsible for his death.
     
    Why this should come as such a bitter surprise, she didn’t know. Perhaps with the passage of time, she’d allowed herself to romanticize the past, to believe that her marriage hadn’t been so suffocating after all, that she’d been no more unhappy than anyone else, and that Tony hadn’t really proved himself anywhere near as mean-spirited a man.
     
    This, then, was his way to remind her, from beyond the grave, of her misery, heartbreak, and shame.
     
    Of the truth.
     
    *  *  *
    V enetia’s head pounded as she detrained at Grand Central Station. She almost walked past the sign held by her friend Lady Tremaine’s driver. Lady Tremaine, her husband, and their two young daughters had already departed for England, but they’d put their automobile at Venetia’s disposal.
    The manservant, who told her his name was Barnes, guided Venetia outside, to where he’d parked the vehicle. Except for the lack of harnessed horses, the automobile exactly resembled a victoria—the open body, the raised driver’s seat in the front, even the calash hood at the back.
     
    “Driving hats for you, Mrs. Easterbrook, from Lady Tremaine.” Barnes motioned toward the stack of hatboxes on the seat.
     
    “Very considerate of her,” Venetia murmured.
     
    Most veiled hats employed ornamental lattices of fabric meant not to conceal, but to draw more attention to the face. The driving hats from Lady Tremaine, however, were not the least bit frivolous. Not that they were ugly, but their veils were proper veils, consisting of two layers of fine netting that wound all around the brim of the hat.
     
    “We won’t go very fast in the city,” said Barnes, adjusting his driving goggles, “but you might find a hat useful driving out in the country, ma’am.”
     
    Venetia unpinned her own