Between the Devil and Ian Eversea by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online

that would decide the game.
    A T DINNER SHE was introduced to myriad Everseas.
    Her first impression was of a forest of tall, darkly appealing men, all white smiles, magnificent cheekbones, and exquisite manners, with manly, very English names: Colin, Marcus, Charles. They were so clearly of a piece, variations on a theme begun by their parents, who were two very handsome people. All of the boys were taller, just a little, than their merry-eyed father. The mother had the same heart-shaped face as Genevieve.
    If they’d been bonbons in a box, she thought she might have first selected the one called Colin, the tallest of them, the only one whose eyes, she could have sworn, were more green than they were blue. And they sparkled.
    She smiled at him.
    He smiled back, and almost, not quite, winked.
    And then his body convulsed swiftly as if someone had stabbed him with a fork.
    He frowned, and the frown wavered and became a smile aimed at the woman across from him.
    Her coloring was striking, her hair black, her skin fair, her dark eyes enigmatic. She had the air of permanent confidence of one who knows she is loved, and she was wearing a little private smile for her husband.
    His wife. Madeleine. The other wives were named Louisa and Rosalind.
    For alas, every last one of the Everseas was married.
    Everyone, apart, that was, from Olivia.
    And at the first sight of Olivia Eversea, Tansy’s confidence wavered just a bit.
    It was easy to see why she’d inspired the men of greater Sussex and beyond to turn the house into a thicket of flowers. Where Genevieve’s beauty was warm and calm, Olivia glittered, like a diamond or a shard. Her eyes were fiercely bright and she was thin, perhaps a bit too thin, but it suited her; there was no angle from which Olivia Eversea’s face wasn’t somehow fascinating. Tansy found herself admiring the way she held her shoulders, and how graceful her slim arms were when she reached for the salt cellar.
    “How very interesting to have an American in our midst, Miss Danforth,” she said. “You hail from New York?”
    “I do. I was born here, and I remember it fondly. But I love New York.” A wave of longing for her previous life crashed over her so suddenly that her hand stilled on her fork. She’d once sat around a dinner table with her own family, laughing and bickering, and had once taken it for granted.
    She reapplied herself to her peas. She needed stamina for the evening ahead. She hoisted the fork up again.
    “Now, the south of your country in particular is populated by slave owners, is it not, Miss Danforth?”
    Tansy’s fork froze on its way to her mouth.
    Oh, Hell’s teeth. It sounded like a trap.
    And she strongly suspected Olivia Eversea was a reader of the sort that she and the duke were not.
    “I suppose some might say that,” she said very, very cautiously.
    “Do you know anyone who—”
    Olivia suddenly hopped a few inches out of her chair and squeaked.
    “Mind the stockings,” she muttered darkly.
    Or at least that’s what Tansy thought she’d said. Tansy frowned a little.
    “Olivia works so hard for excellent causes.” This came from the matriarch, Mrs. Eversea, and she managed to make it sound both like pride and a warning.
    Ah, that was likely why Olivia hadn’t yet married. Tansy couldn’t imagine a man in the world who would tolerate that nonsense for long. Suddenly she was far more certain she’d be able to usurp Olivia’s flower throne.
    She smiled at Olivia, as a way of apologizing for that unworthy thought.
    Olivia smiled back at her, as if she’d heard every word of that thought and wasn’t the least bit worried about her supremacy.
    “Where is your brother?” the matriarch, Mrs. Eversea, asked the handsome Eversea next to her. Marcus?
    Brother? She looked up the table at all those handsome faces. There were more of them?
    Which one of these men was the balcony pagan? she wondered.
    A surge of optimism swept through her. Perhaps men like the