Fascinated by Marissa Day Read Free Book Online Page A

Carstairs, and sitting with him at dinner. His conversation had been excellent, his manner polite and deferential. He’d talked politics with the uncles and about the Season with the aunts. Indeed, he had behaved exactly as one would wish. Then he’d had to leave, a matter of government business, he’d said, and she’d had to return to the ballroom to make his excuses.
    Return to the ballroom?
Alicia froze in place.
When did I leave the ballroom?
    A knock on the door startled Alicia out of her reverie. It was Verity, carrying a tray that held toast spread with marmalade and a cup of tea.
    “Here.” Her cousin set the tray down. “I don’t care what Aunt Eugenia thinks. You have to eat something.”
    “Thank you, Verity.” She looked at the plate of toast, but could not arouse any interest in its contents. Her stomach was clenched too tight.
    “Are you all right? Only you seem distracted this morning.”
    “I always seem distracted.”
    “Yes, but this is a bit much even for you.” Verity laid a hand on Alicia’s arm. “Truly, Alicia, are you well?”
    “You mustn’t worry about me, Verity.” Alicia remembered she should pat Verity’s hand for reassurance, and did so.
    “I do worry. You’ve no one to look out for you, not really.”
    “Lord Carstairs will look out for me.” Alicia paused. Where had those words come from? More than that, where had the certainty behind them come from?
    “I hope so. You…you are glad to be marrying him, aren’t you, Alicia?”
    “As much as I can be.”
    “At least it will get you out of this house,” Verity muttered. “I swear sometimes it’s as if I can’t breathe in here.”
    At these words, Alicia’s throat closed. She had not permitted herself to think that she would really and finally be leaving Hartwell House, which meant leaving Verity. What would she do without her one understanding cousin to stand by her?
    “You’ll have to come visit me,” said Alicia. “Often. We can have you out to the country to stay in the summers. I’m sure his lordship will allow it. They say his estate is quite beautiful.”
    “I’d like that.”
    A fresh knock sounded on the door. “Alicia!” came Aunt Eugenia’s shrill voice from the other side. “Lord Carstairs is here! He’s waiting.”
    “Oh, lor’!” Verity rolled her eyes. “I’ll go down. You’d better get yourself dressed before Aunt Mary expires of apoplexy. And have some of that toast!” She whisked out of the room.
    Verity was right, as usual. Alicia needed to set aside her inconsequential thoughts of last night and concentrate on this moment. A vision of Edward’s face, and his keen gray eyes, flashed in front of her mind’s eye. Her skin remembered him being very close to her, and her heart wanted him closer. She remembered theshape of his mouth, strong yet sensual. And there was something more, something stronger.
    Alicia shook herself. She was woolgathering. She needed to get ready. Lord Carstairs was expecting her, and it was important she not disappoint him.
    “ …I can’t think what on earth is keeping the girl,” said Mary Hartwell, the smallest of Alicia’s maiden aunts, for the hundredth time. She knotted a lace handkerchief in her stout fingers and her attention always seemed to be flitting in six directions at once. Her gray hair was done up in what had surely been a severe and tidy knot that morning, but now curling locks strayed out from under her cap. As a girl, Mary Hartwell might have been sweet and vivacious, but age had turned her simply nervous. Age and, Carstairs suspected, the stern rule of her older sisters.
    Indeed, Carstairs was surprised that only Mary was sitting with him in the sunny morning room. During his previous visits, he’d had to contend with all three of the maiden aunts. They were, Alicia had told him once, actually her great-aunts, and they were as daunting a trio as ever a man faced. Especially Hester Hartwell, with her hooded eyes and thin, dry smile.