The Courtesan's Daughter by Claudia Dain Read Free Book Online Page A

experience since no man ever broke an engagement with me , of any sort.”
    Anne blushed and ducked her head.
    Caro glared at her mother and felt herself becoming less … jumbled. “I’m fine, Mother. I’m not the least bit jumbled.”
    “I don’t suppose I should introduce you,” Sophia said, looking across the room at Ashdon, who was not looking in their direction. He hadn’t looked at Caro since entering the salon.
    Was he intentionally snubbing her? It wasn’t as if he could be upset that she was rejecting his pursuit of her since he hadn’t pursued her at all. He’d been bought and paid for, like a bit of lace or a saddle or a bonnet. She hadn’t gambled herself into penury. She hadn’t agreed to a marriage just to keep the creditors off her doorstep. She was the one who should be snubbing him . Though, watching how thoroughly he ignored her, and she the daughter of the hostess no less, she thought that perhaps snubbing him might be exactly what he would want.
    If there was anything she’d decided in the last few moments of furious introspection it was that Lord Ashdon did not deserve to get what he wanted and certainly not from her.
    “Oh, I think we ought to be introduced,” Caro said, slipping her arm through her mother’s and catching Anne’s hand in hers. “After all, we have something of a connection now. I think it only proper that I meet the man you bought for me.”
    “Really, darling,” Sophia breathed, “there’s no need to be coarse.”
    “I’m only being honest,” Caro said in an undertone as she made her way across the room, practically pulling Anne and her mother behind her.
    “If being honest results in being coarse,” Sophia said, “it is far better to dissemble gracefully than to be vulgarly truthful.”
    She might have been able to think up some clever rejoinder if Lord Ashdon hadn’t suddenly become alarmingly close, turning from his conversation with Viscount Staverton to impale her with his piercing blue eyes.
    She’d been right about those eyes.
    He was wearing a black coat, a lapis blue silk waistcoat, and white knee breeches and cravat. He looked … delicious, if one discounted the bored and superior look on his face.
    She decided not to discount it since he probably thought she should discount it.
    Was there anything worse than a man who could be purchased? Definitely not. He had nothing to feel superior about. Why, with the snap of her fingers, she could have had him delivered to her doorstep like a barrel of oysters.
    Wouldn’t it be lovely if she threatened him with just that?
    She didn’t bother to wonder where that thought had come from because she knew exactly where it had come from: wounded pride. First Richborough and now Ashdon; was there a man alive who found her desireable? It was becoming perfectly obvious that not only would a man not choose to marry her, he would not, unless pressed past all endurance, choose to debauch her. The situation, at this precise moment, looked hopeless. One could hardly be a well-paid courtesan if well-heeled men refused to pay for the promised delights. And as to marriage, if she didn’t have a hope of marrying well without having her mother buy her a husband, the least Lord Ashdon could have done was refuse to be bought.
    “Lord Ashdon, I do not believe you have met my daughter, Lady Caroline Trevelyan?”
    “A pleasure, Lady Caroline,” Lord Ashdon said, bowing slightly.
    Caro dipped her head and curseyed just as slightly.
    What was it about this man that drove needles into her joints and pokers into her heart? She disliked him on principle … and she couldn’t stop staring at him.
    Which was just one more reason to dislike him.
    “You remember Lord Staverton, of course,” her mother said, smiling at Lord Staverton. Lord Staverton, looking the height of fashion, was ruddy cheeked and fifty if he was a day.
    He had known her mother from her first days in London and, according to a passing comment her father had