Author: Sara Bennett
Category: Historical
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/39978_16
But now he felt a stirring inside him, an urge—one he tried hard to quash—to do something reckless and wild. To show Eugenie he wasn’t the stuffed shirt she imagined him.
He shifted restlessly, glancing down at the note on his desk. He’d written to his mother about the village dance and just received a reply, and now he forced himself to read it.
“Do be careful, Sinclair,” she’d written in her neat scrawl. “Annabelle is at an impressionable age and if you don’t keep a close eye on her one of those yokels will make off with her fickle heart. A heart, which I should not have to remind you, belongs to Lucius!”
Sinclair had no intention of allowing Annabelle to forget where her future lay, but he couldn’t help but wonder what his mother would think if he told her how much his own thoughts had recently become preoccupied with Miss Eugenie Belmont. She’d raise her narrow eyebrows and fix him with one of her cool aristocratic looks.
“Really, Sinclair,” she would say, “can’t you do better than that?”
Whispers: Interactive StoriesMake your own choices and decide what happens next!
He’d explain to her what it was about Eugenie that made her so fascinating, although because he didn’t really understand the reason himself he’d probably make a hash of it.
“You have a duty not to make your family a laughingstock, Sinclair.”
He thought about the painting in the gallery, the fierce Boudicca, bare-breasted, with her sword raised against the Roman invaders. Her red curls tumbling about her shoulders and her eyes glittering with purpose.
“You are lusting after Boudicca?” his mother w
ould sneer. “Dear me, Sinclair. Wasn’t she a savage?”
But he wasn’t lusting after the woman in the painting; he was far more interested in Eugenie. She seemed to occupy a special place in his thoughts. And when Annabelle began speaking about the village ball and what she would wear and how excited she was to be going, he might tease her and roll his eyes and play the bored older brother, but in truth he was just as eager.
The cobbled square, on one side of which sat The Acorn, was alive with people and noise and flaring torches. The rain that had at one point threatened to spoil the evening was gone, leaving the ground washed clean and the air fresh and sharp. The Belmonts were on time, mainly because Terry had harried them like a sheepdog a mob of sheep in his impatience to get here, although he was sensible enough not to tell his parents the real reason for his impatience. Eugenie felt frazzled, wondering if she was properly turned out. There hadn’t been enough time to check her appearance as often as she’d wished to, and now it was too late.
Her tentative, “Do I look well?” was met with a chortle from her father and a teasing, “Are you hoping to catch a husband tonight, Genie? Make sure you ask him whether he is rich before you fall in love with him, because if he is poor then I will refuse to give my permission for the banns.”
“This was where I first met and fell in love with your father,” Mrs. Belmont said, sighing. “He was by far the most handsome man in the room.”
“And did you ask him if he was rich, Mama?” Eugenie asked innocently.
Her mother pretended not to hear. The difficulties of her marriage to Sir Peter Belmont were well known, but Mrs. Belmont’s manner of dealing with them was to always believe the best of her husband and to turn a blind eye to the worst.
Eugenie had always expected to meet her future husband at a ball like the one tonight at The Acorn. That was before she’d got herself into this scrape with her friends at Miss Debenham’s and the Husband Hunters Club.
They went indoors and up the stairs to the rooms set aside for the ball. Eugenie swallowed her nervousness and smiled at her acquaintances, exchanging a word here and there, and gradually she began to relax and stop herself from worrying about what may or may not happen, and how she was going to play the part required of her if Sinclair did turn up.
Village balls were always great fun, even if sometimes matters got out of hand. Despite what Terry had told Lady Annabelle, there was certainly no stuffiness or grandstanding, apart from the landlord of The Acorn, who liked to remind everyone that it was down to his generosity that they were here at all. Whenever she had a moment, Eugenie glanced about her, but she could not see the duke or his sister. She told herself firmly that she wouldn’t be disappointed if they didn’t turn up, despite Terry’s insistence that they would.
In fact I would be relieved.
But it wasn’t true, not really. She wanted to see Sinclair again. She wanted to test her feminine skills on him. She wanted—she hardly dared to admit it even to herself—to kiss him.
“Annabelle promised,” Terry said smugly, when she voiced her doubts to him, as if he knew her better than anyone.
“Lady Annabelle to you,” Eugenie reminded him sharply.
He pulled a face at her. “She hates being Lady Annabelle. She says she’d rather have been born in a hedgerow.”
“For heaven’s sake don’t encourage her,” Eugenie hissed. “She sounds very young and impressionable. You’re not planning anything silly tonight, are you, Terry?”
“Depends what you mean by silly,” he retorted. “I’m going to show her some fun, that’s all.”
“Well, I hope that’s all. The duke will lock you up in his dungeon if you do anything to compromise his sister.”
Terry snorted and walked off to join a group of his friends, all of whom were slouching as if they had no bones.
Eugenie told herself that the duke was perfectly capable of watching over his sister and she was worrying over nothing, so she smiled and tapped her foot as the musicians struck up again and tried very hard to enjoy herself.
It wasn’t until there was a stir at the door that she became aware that something out of the ordinary was happening. Eugenie looked up with the rest of the crowd. The tall, handsome figure of Somerton and his beautiful sister had drawn all eyes. The third member of their party was the fair-haired girl, Miss Gamboni, the chaperone for Annabelle, but it was the brother and sister who commanded the attention of the room.