Read Desperately Seeking Suzanna for Free Online Page B

champagne. He smiled and squeezed her hand. This was an entertaining evening indeed. And it would only improve from here.
    “A drink would be lovely.”
    “Very well, then. Wait here by this…”—he quirked a brow at the sculpture they were standing beside before turning back to her—“truly hideous Grecian man. I’ll return in a moment.”
    ***
    Holden had only been gone a few minutes. And yet the country dance playing in the ballroom seemed to stretch on forever in his absence. Sue wound her fingers together and feigned interest in the dance before her. In her heart, however, she was back upstairs under the weight of him, with his hands on her and his mouth—she blushed.
    Glimpses of Evangeline and Victoria passed by as they moved around the floor with gentlemen hanging on every swish of their skirts. Isabelle was on the opposite side of the ballroom laughing at some remark the gentleman beside her made. It seemed like a lifetime ago when Sue had descended the stairs with her family. So much had happened. The very air around her was new and alive. She would never be the same now and she was happy for it.
    A hand wrapped around her shoulder, spinning her toward the back terrace doors. Although the grip was a little tight and lacked the warmth of Holden’s earlier touch, she turned with a smile for him.
    “Back so soon?” The smile slipped from her face.
    “Back? Who were you expecting, Sue? Dressed as you are, I’m not sure I wish to know.” Her mother’s thin lips were drawn into a straight line of disapproval as her eyes swept over Sue’s hair and down her face to land on the gathered neck of her gown.
    “Mother.”
    “Yes, I am. Who, however, are you? No daughter of mine should be here disguised as some disgusting creature of the demimonde.”
    “That’s not how I’m dressed at all. I only came here because…”
    “I will not hear your excuses,” her mother hissed. “You will come with me.”
    Her long thin fingers wrapped around Sue’s wrist, propelling her toward the nearby terrace doors. Sue only dared to throw one glance over her shoulder, searching for Holden, but he was still in the next room acquiring drinks. He wouldn’t know where she’d gone. How could she inform him? The question was pushed from her thoughts as her mother pulled her into darkness. The crisp night air hit Sue’s face as she left the ballroom, washing away all the warmth and happiness she’d found there.
    Her attention returned to her mother as the mask was stripped from her face and thrown on the stone floor. Sue blinked at the rush of cool against her skin.
    “Shameful.” Her mother pulled a handkerchief from the edge of her glove and trapped Sue’s face between the two fingers clamped on her chin. Dragging her into a rectangle of light falling from a window, her mother began rubbing at the rouge on her cheeks. The rough linen scrubbed across her skin, leaving her cheeks raw in its wake.
    “Mother, that hurts.”
    “As it should. It pains me to have our family represented in such a fashion at a friend’s ball.”
    Once Sue’s cheeks were raw and her mother satisfied with her work, she began cleaning the color from Sue’s lips. It was as if the entire evening was being wiped away. Scrub. Holden’s kisses. Scrub. Her smiles. Scrub. Their laughter. She blinked away the moisture gathering in her eyes.
    “Now to be rid of these feathers. Really, Sue. Such excess. Evangeline may be able to wear such adornment, but not you. You don’t have her lean grace, nor her face.” With that explanation, her mother ripped the feathers from Sue’s hair and tossed them into a nearby bush.
    Next came the ribbons. The artful bows were stripped from her gown, releasing the folds of fabric around her. This must be what it felt like to be the wrapping on a parcel. She was the plain paper that had once wrapped an exquisite gift and was now left behind for the maids to dispose of. When the last ribbons were released and her gown