Read Suzanne Robinson for Free Online

enormous room were arranged groups of chairs and couches, ferns and flowers in antique vases and urns. Upon their arrival in the gallery, Narcissa was snatched up by her fiancé’s parents. Mattie had just enough time to glimpse Edward Allington’s portrait by Holbein before being surrounded by young men.
    “Miss Bright, my evening is complete at the sight of your beauty.”
    Mattie put on a polite smile. “Why, Lord Herne, you’re so kind.”
    “He’s not kind,” said Harry Blinksdale, “he’s boring. Herne, you rotter, can’t you think of anything original to say about Miss Bright? I call her uncommon fair. Her beauty is the toast of the empire.”
    “And her voice,” chimed in the Marquis of Eckleshire. “Her voice is that of a goddess singing in the clouds.”
    Mattie let the gentlemen babble and tried not to roll her eyes. It was amazing how the plainest of girls became exquisite when her fortune reached the millions. She happened to know of at least twenty young ladies far more presentable and certainly more charming than herself who rated no such attentions simply because they had but a few hundred pounds a year. Before the evening was over she would accept asinine compliments like this from almost a dozen titled men. And all of them wanted her money.
    The marquis, for example, had to support three sisters, a widowed mother, and two aunts. Lord Herne’s father had gambled away most of the family fortune, while Harry Blinksdale was in search of a lady who could support his expensive stud. When he looked at her, Mattie had no doubt he saw the face of his favorite racehorse. Blinksdale’s highest ambition was to beat the Prince of Wales’s entry in the Derby.
    “I say,” Blinksdale said in his high, wheedling tone, “did you hear old Allington is coming tonight?”
    “No!”
    “You’re not serious.”
    “It’s true. I heard it from the duchess herself. He’s decided to reform.”
    “Good God.”
    Mattie glanced from one supercilious face to another, noting the alarm that they shared.
    “Who’s old Allington?”
    The marquis sniffed. “An absolute rotter, my dear Miss Bright. An unsavory younger son of the duke’s. Almost got himself kicked out of the family for his beastly manners, you see.” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Went into trade, in the city. Investments, of all things. Absolutely no conception of what it is to be a gentleman.”
    “Yes,” said Herne. “You should be warned. More than one young lady has been blinded by his appearance, only to discover what an unsavory sort he is.”
    Harry Blinksdale elbowed Herne. “Shhh! The duchess.”
    Herne tried to whisper something to Mattie, but Her Grace’s voice drowned him out. “Miss Bright, I’d like you to meet my youngest son, Geoffrey Cheyne.”
    Mattie disengaged herself from Lord Herne and turned to the newly arrived nobleman. Her jaw fell while he paused in reaching for the hand she’d extended for him to kiss. Time stopped while Mattie beheld the startled Geoffrey Cheyne Allington.
    Without his dressing of tomato and melon pulp, Allington’s effect on her was unexpected. He wore jet-black evening attire as easily as he had riding clothes. No Saville Row tailor had been forced to pad the shoulders of his coat or widen the waist of his trousers. He wore no jewelry, but no woman would notice once she’d glimpsed the Prussian blue blaze of his eyes. What was more startling was the aura of barely leashed force emanating from theman. Like some puissant mage in a fairy tale, a sorcerer, one expected powerful spells, the summoning of dragons or black enchantments.
    “Lord Geoffrey,” the duchess said as if to prod her son from his silence, “Miss Bright.”
    Allington blinked, as if startled awake. “Dear God, it’s the harpy.”
    “Geoffrey!”
    Mattie came out of her amazed trance and flushed. Her suitors bristled.
    “I say, old man. What kind of tone is that?”
    “Don’t complain to me, Blinksdale.