Read Elisabeth Fairchild for Free Online

unruly, bad tempered, tantrum-throwing child part of her that she had never learned to wholly silence.
    She set out after Miles Fletcher. She need not explain herself, or her plans to win Walsh, but she must apologize.
    Too long had she stood debating the issue. Miles Fletcher stopped to talk with none other than Lord Walsh and the delicate, dark-haired, bone china female he had been dancing with when she had toppled him to the floor. Lord help her! He knew Walsh! They greeted one another with casual familiarity. She had missed a golden opportunity in accepting Miles Fletcher’s invitation to dance. He might have eventually introduced her to Walsh. As it was, he took up the willing hand of the pale-complected beauty Walsh had been parading around the floor and coaxed her to dance with little more than a smile. Dash it all! He looked very elegant from across the room in his meticulously correct attire. The young woman showed to advantage on Miles Fletcher’s arm.
    Aurora liked to be right. She wanted to be right in her refusal of Mr. Fletcher’s offer of a dance. Perhaps he was clumsy, she reasoned, no more than a prancing, foppish fool no more graceful than the dreadful Mr. Potter.
    But, Aurora had been wrong with regard to every other aspect of the evening. It did not surprise her that she had been wrong in this respect as well.
    The music was a waltz. Expecting the worst, Aurora was more than a little jealous to watch Mr. Fletcher and his partner glide across the floor like swans upon the still surface of a lake. His sleek, dark head bent to the young woman’s equally dark curls. She smiled in response to his remark. Step, step, glide. The man was a master. There were none who could compare to the fluid, swimming sweep of his movements, none who seemed so much at ease in this new and daring dance step. He looked, in his stark black and white, as elegant and as polished as his words had been.
    What a fool she was! Aurora regretted her entire exchange with Miles Fletcher and wondered what it would have been like to count him her admirer. Her future might have been changed had she but said yes instead of no to the offer of a young man’s arm. Frustrated, Aurora turned her back on the room, wondering if she would have a second chance to prove herself with either Fletcher or Walsh.
     
    “Who is she?” Grace wanted to know of Miles as soon as he led her away from Walsh.
    “Who?” Miles asked with mock ignorance. He knew exactly who she meant--the young woman he could not drive from mind or memory--the female who drew him even as she drove him away--whose future he meant to affect. L' Amazon stood staring at him, as he and his sister joined the set.
    Grace was not about to drop the subject. “You know. The sublimely foolish, falling-down-girl with the dreadful dress who blessed your toes by refusing to dance with you.”
    Miles smiled. “Do you not recognize my sublime goddess of this afternoon?”
    Grace’s eyes widened. “That is never the same creature!”
    “Oh, but it is.”
    “Gad! Whatever was she thinking to pull all of that glorious hair away from her face?”
    Miles smiled a tight little smile. “Perhaps she felt her hair too forward for polite company.”
    Grace laughed. “Fling my words back into my face. Go ahead. I deserved that. Now, tell me who she is. I am all curiosity and contrition.”
    “Beyond that she is called Aurora Ramsay, I know very little.”
    “Not ‘Rakehell’s sister?” she laughed. “And what is it they call the other brother? Rue?”
    “Watch your tongue, my dear. And your manners. You have neglected to mention ‘Rash’, ‘Rogering’ and ‘Rip’ Ramsay, also of the same family.”
    “Have I? What a bother to be the only girl among five such brothers! It’s no wonder the poor thing hasn’t a clue about her appearance. Tell me, do they all have red hair? It is such a passionate color to carry about on one’s head.”
    “I’m told they do. You may see for yourself