Not Quite a Lady by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

and choke you dead.
    She knew no one could read minds. He must have read something, though, because the quizzical expression disappeared, and he blinked.
    She watched his mouth curve slowly into a smile. “Have we not?”
    Under that lazy smile, something inside her seemed to unfurl, like flower petals opening under the sun.
    But that’s what rake’s smiles did, she reminded herself: They made women soft and malleable.
    “No,” she said. She glanced at her parents. The rector and his wife had claimed their attention.
    “Perhaps you have a twin sister,” said Mr. Carsington. He made a show of looking about the drawing room.
    “No, I do not,” she said.
    “How strange,” he said.
    “It is not at all strange not to have a twin,” she said. “It is more common not to have one.”
    “I could have sworn that we met, only a few hours ago, by a pond at Beechwood,” he said, still in the We-Have-a-Secret undertone. “You were wearing—or rather, not wearing—a wonderfully frivolous hat.”
    He had teased her with the hat as a little boy might do, and for a moment she had wanted to play.
    Experience came to her rescue. The mischief in his eyes was no more boyish than it was innocent. What she saw in those changeable amber eyes was a rake’s guile.
    “A lady and a gentleman may not know each other unless they have been properly introduced,” she said coolly. “If they do not know each other, they cannot have met. Since we were properly introduced only a moment ago, we cannot have met previously.”
    “What a madly contorted logic that is,” he said.
    “It is a rule of behavior,” she said. “It needn’t be logical. There may even be a rule that rules of behavior must be illogical.”
    His eyes lit. At first she thought what she saw there was amusement, and she cursed herself, because she did not wish to entertain him. But then his gaze drifted from her face to her neck and downward, lingering upon her bosom before it swept down to the toes of her silk slippers. It came up again so swiftly that she hadn’t time to get her breathing back to normal. She could hide that, but not the rest of her reaction.
    Her face was hot. Everywhere was hot. Meanwhile, her tattletale skin was announcing the fact, she knew, spreading a blush over her neck and the extensive area of shoulders and bosom her gown revealed.
    He was enjoying her agitation.
    Anger crackled inside her.
    Once, only once, she would like to do something, instead of silently enduring a man’s insolent examination.
    But a lady must pretend not to notice when a man disrobed her with his eyes.
    It was not fair.
    When a man took offense at something, he was allowed to react. He was expected to react.
    If she were a man, she could push him into a piece of furniture or black his eye.
    But she wasn’t a man, and she could not summon another man to do the job for her. Creating a scene would be disastrous as well as ridiculous. She was not a child. She was a woman of seven and twenty, a nobleman’s daughter with eight Seasons behind her. She was expected to possess complete self-control. She was expected to handle difficult or unpleasant situations with poise and courtesy.
    She must not get even or punish him.
    She must ignore it…and he knew she must, the beast.
    She simmered helplessly for a time.
    But Lady Charlotte Hayward was nothing if not resourceful. Even while she was fuming, her mind was working. She had dealt with scores of men. She could deal with this one, too.

Chapter 3
    Mistake, Darius thought. Stupid, stupid mistake.
    He couldn’t believe he’d made it.
    Virgins are out of bounds.
    His eldest brother Benedict had thrashed the rule into him when he was fifteen.
    Long after he’d outgrown the thrashing method, Logic had verified the rule. Virgins, said Logic, were a waste of time, too much work for too little reward. When the virgin was a gentleman’s daughter, the price for this negligible amount of pleasure was marriage.
    Move on, Logic told