Beguiling the Beauty by Sherry Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

stay.”
     
    A hotel attendant ushered her toward the lift, which came promptly, the metallic cage shunting into place with a soft ding. An accordion door folded into the wall; the inner door slid open.
     
    “Good afternoon, ma’am,” said the lift attendant. “Good afternoon, Your Grace.”
     
    Him again. She turned her head a few surreptitious degrees. Lexington stood to the side, slightly behind her, waiting for her to enter the lift.
Move
, she ordered herself.
Move.
     
    Somehow her feet carried her forward. Lexington followed her inside. He glanced her way, but did not acknowledge her. Instead, he turned his attention to the gilded panels that adorned the elevator’s interior.
     
    “Which floor, ma’am?” asked the lift attendant.
     
    “Fünfzehnter Stock,” she said.
     
    “Pardon, ma’am?”
     
    “The lady wishes to go to the fifteenth floor,” said the duke.
     
    “Ah, thank you, sir.”
     
    The lift was leisurely, almost sluggish, in its ascent. She began to suffocate under her veil. Yet she dared not breathe with any vigor, for fear she’d betray her agitation.The duke, on the other hand, was at his ease. His jaw carried no tension. His posture was straight but not rigid. His hands, folded over the top of his walking stick, were perfectly relaxed.
     
    Her anger blazed to a firestorm. It roared in her ears. Her fingertips were hot with a desire for violence.
     
    How dare he? How dare he use her to illustrate his stupid, misogynistic points? How dare he destroy her hard-won peace of mind? And how dare he ooze such cool smugness, such insufferable satisfaction with his own life?
     
    When the lift dinged into place on the fifteenth floor, she charged out.
     
    “Gnädige Frau.”
     
    It took her a moment to recognize his voice, speaking in German.
     
    She walked faster. She did not want to hear his voice. She did not want to further perceive his presence. She wanted only that he should fall into a pit of vipers on his next expedition and suffer the painful effects of their venom for the remainder of his life.
     
    “Your map, madam,” he said, still in German. “You left it in the lift.”
     
    “I don’t need it anymore,” she answered curtly in the same language, without turning around. “Keep it.”
     
    C hristian tossed the baroness’s map on the console table just inside his suite. He pulled off his coat, dropped it on the back of a chair, and deposited himself in the chair opposite.
    Ten days after the fact, he remained astonished by his own conduct. What had possessed him? As a man plaguedby a chronic condition, he’d learned to live with it. He carried on. He kept busy. And he never spoke of it.
     
    Until he did, luridly, at length, in a theater full of strangers.
     
    He wanted to never think of this gross misstep again, but he kept revisiting his confession—the defiant pleasures of at last acknowledging, however obliquely, his fixation upon Mrs. Easterbrook, the bottomless mortification once he realized what he’d done.
     
    Perhaps he’d made a strategic mistake by avoiding the London Season and the possibilities of running into her. By staying away, he also deprived himself of a large pool of young women. Who was to say he would not find among them someone who could take his mind permanently off her?
     
    A knock came. Christian opened the door himself—he’d given his valet two weeks’ leave to visit his brother, who’d immigrated to New York. A very young porter bowed and handed him a note from Mrs. Winthrop, a fellow guest at the hotel who had been throwing herself at him for the past three days.
     
    Christian badly needed a distraction, but he liked to uphold a minimum of standards in his dalliances. Mrs. Winthrop, unfortunately, was not only excessively vain, but more than a little stupid. Judging by her newest invitation, she also could not take a hint.
     
    “Send Mrs. Winthrop some flowers with my regrets,” he said to the porter.
     
    “Yes,