Read Suzanne Robinson for Free Online Page A

backward into a corner beside a table and set the glass down. Looking around her, she saw that no one was paying attention to her. She had to get away, because there was a pain in her chest, deep down inside. Her lungs tightened, and her eyes hurt from tears that were working their way to the surface. Soon she wouldn’t be able to stop them.
    If she were an English girl, someone would have noticed her going. Since she was that odd, ill-bred American, she wasn’t important enough to cause comment by her leaving. For that she was grateful.
    Kate picked up her skirts and walked toward the sweeping great staircase that would take her to her room. She reached the foot of it before her vision blurred. She thanked the good Lord she was in the dark hallway when her tears fell, and that she was in her room before she began to sob.
    Why was she hurt so badly? Horrible, dirty men had tried to do things to her, and she hadn’t cried. It was only that she hadn’t expected the cruelty. He was a stranger, and he was supposed to be a Gentleman. She couldn’t understand why he would want to humiliate her.
    She sank into a chair, leaned on its arm, and cried. She pressed her hands over her mouth so that none of the servants would hear her and investigate. As she tried to control her sobs, her corset creaked with the movement of her body, making her feel ridiculous, and she cried harder. Eventually she was too tired to cry. She leaned back in the chair and stared at the flames in the fireplace. The fire was the only light in the room.
    There must be something wrong with her. She hadn’t realized it, but it must be so. That was why Mr. Arbuthnot didn’t want to talk to her, and that was why Alexis de Granville lied so he wouldn’t have to dance with her. Both men were ashamed to be seen with her. Perhaps it was theway she looked. After all, Ophelia had almost said straight out that Kate’s coloring was freakish. She must be right.
    Kate pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose and dragged them beneath her eyes. They came away covered in powder.
    It hurt too much, this trying to be a Lady. She wanted to find a woodpile and dive under it. Standing up, she reached behind her back and tore at the fastenings of her gown. More material ripped when her fingers dug into the corset lacings. Soon she was nude and shivering. She climbed over the pile of discarded clothes, found a nightgown, and put it on.
    Climbing under the covers, she tugged at the bell cord beside her bed. She would tell a servant to let Ophelia and her mother know that she was sick. Then she hopped back out of bed and retrieved two handkerchiefs from an armoire. She might need them. Huddling beneath blankets and sheets, she felt something at the back of her head. The spray of white flowers. She tore them from her hair. Her fingers twisted and shredded the petals. Faster and faster they worked, until there was nothing left of the blossoms. She gathered a fistfull of petals and hurled them to the floor.
    “Who needs dancing anyway.” Her voice was barely audible to her own ears.
    She didn’t need dancing. If she didn’t go to dances, she wouldn’t be hurt anymore. And the way to avoid dances was not to become a Lady. Kate settled back among the pillows. She was going back to America. She didn’t need dancing at all, and the next time a man turned her world into magic, she would shoot him.

Chapter Three
    Maitland House, April 1855
    She’d promised herself never to return, and yet here she was, plumb in the middle of English Society again after little more than a year. Kate stepped over the threshold of Maitland House, past a bowing butler, and onto the white marble floor of the entryway. She caught her lower lip between her teeth when she heard Mama burst into tears as she threw herself into cousin Ophelia’s arms. She wasn’t going to cry. There was unpacking to be seen to, letters to write.
    What an odd coincidence it had been that she’d convinced Mama to let