Read Jane Austen: Blood Persuasion for Free Online Page B

cold. You must sit with us by the fire and warm yourself. These old houses can be so drafty. Jane, it is Miss Venning—you and she were almost inseparable that winter in Bath . . .” Mrs. Austen’s voice trailed into silence, but then she resumed with great good cheer. “And Miss Venning, you remember Cassandra, of course, and this is our friend Miss Martha Lloyd.”
    Clarissa Venning gave Jane a cool nod. Whether she and Luke were actually siblings was highly unlikely; Jane had long suspected that the term was used to account for them sharing the same house, just as Dorcas Kettering claimed to be William’s sister-in-law.
    Jane returned her nod with equal coolness.
    “You left me as well as Luke,” Clarissa said to her quietly. “It was badly done, Jane. And now you return. Will you break Luke’s heart anew? Deprive William of his fledgling once again? Why, Tom!”—with a sudden coquettishness—“Your young partner is charming, but you promised to dance with me, remember. Mrs. Austen, allow me to present Mr. Duval Richards.”
    Of course Clarissa would be accompanied by a young man of outstanding beauty, but even for one of the Damned he was extraordinary, with dark liquid eyes beneath a handsome head of wavy hair. An air of romance and danger hung around him, as though, Jane thought with a curl of her lip, he were an engraving of a hero in a gothic romance; he was certainly someone who should not be allowed to dance with an innocent young girl.
    Clarissa’s gaze pinned Jane like a specimen on a collection board. Jane could not speak or utter any sort of warning to her family, who fluttered and smiled upon Duval, and gave him permission to dance with Anna. Anna stared at him, apparently entranced, with the pride of a woman who has been singled out by the most handsome man in the room.
    “Why, Jane, you frown so!” Cassandra patted her hand. “What a handsome young man. I could not quite discern with which family he is connected, but Miss Venning knows him, so he must be genteel. You know, she puts us dowdy country spinsters to shame, for she hardly looks a day older than when we met her first.”
    “No. He’s not genteel,” Jane croaked, but her voice was barely a whisper. Furious at her weakness, and at Clarissa, who was almost certainly the cause of it, she drained her glass and looked around for a footman to refill it. But William, his hand held out, had returned.
    “Come, Jane, you promised me a dance and I have come to claim it.”
    Her mother and sister exchanged a glance at Jane being addressed with such familiarity.
    Her voice returned. “I beg your pardon, sir. I shall not dance. It is unbecoming to a woman of my age and station.”
    Don’t be a ninny . William replied aloud, “I must insist, ma’am.”
    “Oh, very well.” She stood and strode past him to where the dancers formed sets. “And I’m not a ninny,” she said over her shoulder.
    She had never danced with William before and was surprised at how well matched they were, at the effortless touch of their hands and telling glances. Onlookers, her family included, might well think they were at the very least flirting, if not planning a liaison.
    An elderly gentleman tugged them out of the dance, to compliment them on the elegance of their dancing, breathing claret fumes over them, so that when they could escape him they had lost their places entirely. Some inelegant scrambling back into the set righted matters.
    As she and William progressed through the dance, they met Anna and the fascinatingly beautiful member of the Damned. Jane did her best to communicate mind to mind how strongly she disapproved of the way his hands lingered over Anna’s and that his ardent attentions to her niece smacked of impropriety. He gave a smirk in her direction and directed his smoldering gaze at Anna’s pretty white neck.
    “That young man is most improper,” she said to William.
    “He is not young, Jane.”
    “Precisely. Do I have reason to