Read Slightly Dangerous for Free Online

ladies, who demanded to know what was so amusing them.
    “Nothing,” Harriet King said. “Nothing at all, Mama. We were merely discussing the gentlemen who are expected here.”
    Christine smiled too. Had she ever been this silly? But she knew she had. She had married Oscar on the strength of a two-month acquaintance, merely because he was as handsome as a Greek god—it had been a common description of him—and she had fallen head over ears in love with his looks and his charm.
    “And you, Cousin Christine?” Audrey asked when the older ladies had returned their attention to their own conversation. It had been agreed upon that Audrey would hold the bank—one guinea from each of the participants, the whole amount to go to the winner or back to each individual at the end of the two weeks if no one could claim the prize.
    Christine pointed at herself in some surprise and raised her eyebrows. “Me? Oh, no, indeed,” she said, and laughed.
    “I really do not see why not,” Audrey said, cocking her head to one side and observing Christine more thoroughly. “You are a widow, not a married lady, after all, and Cousin Oscar has been gone for two whole years. And you are still not
very
old. I doubt you have reached the age of thirty yet.”
    The other young ladies turned in a collective body to gaze askance at someone who was close to thirty. Their silence spoke quite eloquently enough to assure Christine that at her age she had no hope whatsoever of engaging a duke’s attention for a full hour.
    She wholeheartedly agreed with them, though not because she was twenty-nine rather than nineteen.
    “I really cannot see the attraction of paying for the privilege of being frozen into an icicle for all of one hour,” she said.
    “You do have a point,” Audrey conceded.
    “You are the daughter of a country schoolmaster, are you not, Mrs. Derrick?” Harriet King asked with obvious disdain. “You are afraid of losing the wager, I daresay.”
    “I am indeed,” Christine conceded with a smile—the question, she understood, had been rhetorical. “But I do believe that I would be even more afraid of winning. What on earth would I do with a duke?”
    There was a moment of silence and then another burst of giggles.
    “I could offer an idea or two,” Miriam Dunstan-Lutt said, and then blushed at her own risqué words.
    “Enough of this,” Audrey said firmly, holding up one hand for everyone’s attention and checking quickly to be sure that no one in the other group was listening. “I really cannot allow you to preclude yourself merely on the grounds that you do not
wish
to win, Cousin Christine. I shall put in the guinea for you. I shall, in effect, wager on you. And is that not shocking when ladies are not supposed to wager at all?”
    “What gentlemen do not know will not hurt them,” Beryl Chisholm said.
    “You will lose your guinea, I do assure you,” Christine told Audrey, laughing and wondering how the Duke of Bewcastle would react if he knew what was transpiring in the primrose sitting room.
    “Perhaps,” Audrey agreed. “But my expectation is that no one will win, and so my money is sure to return safely to me. Of course, since the wager is not to draw the duke into a marriage proposal but only into a lengthy conversation, I could enter the competition myself, but I don’t think I will. I don’t think seven guineas is sufficient inducement. Besides, Lewis might be jealous, and it would be no defense to explain to him that I was attempting to win a
wager
.”
    A bell rang from somewhere beyond the sitting room, the signal that everyone had now arrived and that they were all expected to assemble in the drawing room for tea.
    “And so,” Harriet King said to Lady Sarah, “you have never even met the Duke of Bewcastle?”
    “No,” Sarah admitted, “but if he is a duke, he surely must be handsome.”
    “I
have
met him,” Harriet said, linking her arm through Sarah’s in preparation for leaving the room