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

charming to everyone, including me, and she’ll be that way to you, too, if you give her a chance.”
    Genevieve was magnanimous in happiness and love and prepared to be blinkered and loyal to a reminder of something her husband cherished from his past.
    “We shall see,” Olivia said to the mirror. Love had been less kind to her, and she would never trust easily again.
    A FTER A BRIEF dash to her room to pinch her cheeks and bite her lips and shake out her dress after sitting for dinner, Tansy ventured toward the ballroom.
    She arrived on the threshold just as an excellent orchestra launched into a reel. And suddenly it felt as though her heart had been lifted up and twirled.
    Lively music was very close to perfect happiness. Her life for so long had been full of movement, none of it particularly pleasant, none of it her choice. Tonight she would love to lose herself in one dance after another, like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower.
    She took another tentative step into the room.
    It wasn’t yet crowded. None of the faces she immediately saw were familiar. It was odd to think that by the end of the night they likely would be.
    She took another step into the room. A bit like wading into cool water and becoming accustomed to it, bit by bit.
    She took another step, smiling.
    And then she froze.
    Something terrible happened.
    Her breath left her abruptly, as if she’d been dropped from a great height. Her vision spangled. She gave a half turn and peered over her shoulder, as if expecting to see the assailant who had taken a shovel to her head and utterly scrambled her senses.
    She slowly, cautiously, turned her head again back toward ballroom. Toward that wall.
    Alas, she already knew it wasn’t a shovel assailant. It was much worse.
    It was a man.
    A disturbing, delicious heat rushed over her skin. The entire world amplified inexplicably. Suddenly everything seemed louder and brighter and she was terribly conscious of her limbs, as if they were all newly installed and she would have to relearn how to use them.
    For heaven’s sake. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t seen handsome men before. She’d routinely managed the affections of handsome men with the skill of a puppeteer. And it wasn’t a result of being out of the game, as it were. Giancarlo, handsome as he was, had scarcely raised her pulse.
    What on earth was the difference here, then? Was it the way he held himself, as though the world itself was his to command? The faintly amused, detached expression, as if he intended to use everything and everyone he saw in it as his plaything, and make them like it? The sleek fit of his flawlessly tailored, elegantly simple clothes, which only made her wonder, shockingly, about what he looked like under the clothes? The arrogant profile? His delicious, nearly intimidating height?
    It was all of those things and none of them. All she knew for certain was that it was new, and suddenly she was as blank-minded as a newborn.
    Conscious that she was gawking, she forced herself to look in some other direction, which turned out to be, for some reason, up.
    The only thing of interest on the ceiling was the chandelier, so she feigned wonderstruck admiration.
    When she looked down again, the man was watching her. Clearly puzzled.
    Her heart kicked violently.
    His mouth tilted slightly at the corner, his head inclined in a slight nod, polite, a little indulgent.
    His gaze kept traveling across the room, idly.
    He’d skimmed her. As if she’d been a chair or a chandelier, or, unthinkably . . . a plain girl.
    For the second time in minutes she experienced the shovel sensation.
    A horrifying thought occurred to her: what if she wasn’t considered attractive in England? What if there was something about her features the English found comical? What if golden hair was considered passé? She felt as though the sword had suddenly been flipped from her hand.
    She nearly leaped out of her slippers when someone touched her elbow.