JoAnn Wendt Read Online Free Page B

low—at arm’s length. The carefully cultivated smile isolated her, kept her safe from kitchen gossip and the more vicious snipes of the well-born. Head high, she swept past the boy without replying.
    Her light step echoed down the corridor, carrying her to the balcony of mirrors that overlooked the white marble entrance hall below. A marble staircase curved downward from each side of the balcony. As she lifted her skirts slightly to descend, cloth-of-silver peeped from beneath her gown, swirling at her ankles. Clicking down the snow-white staircase, she anxiously studied her repeating image in the mirrored panels that followed her down. Her anxiety lessened with each candle-lit image.
    She looked every inch the duchess. The duke would be pleased. Her girlish mass of red hair had been tamed to a sleek sophistication. Washed three times by a clucking covey of hairdressers, her hair had been brushed dry, then drawn to the crown of her head and coaxed into a tumble of Greek curls that emulated the Greek statues of Tewksbury Gardens. A tendril of burnished hair curled at each ear, softening the blaze of diamonds that trembled there.
    Her gown was French, as the duke had commanded. An acclaimed dressmaker had been summoned from Paris. The result—dazzling. Even the difficult-to-please duke deemed it worthy of the occasion.
    The gown was a sweep of ivory satin. The neckline was low and trimmed with flowerlike ivory satin petals. Each petal was encrusted with seed pearls and brilliants. Cloth-of-silver underskirts rippled at the hem of her gown as she moved, lending a silvery grace. She wore diamonds on her fingers, diamonds on her wrists and the famous Tewksbury diamond pendant upon her white bosom.
    With a last anxious glance in the glass, Flavia stepped from the staircase, releasing her skirts. The heavy satin woofed softly as it settled round her. She hurried on, her step echoing in the entrance hall, her step clicking over a floor of snowy marble that had as its center the ducal crest worked in black and gold marble. From their posts near the tall, ornately carved double doors, footmen bowed as she passed. A glance out the Venetian glass windows assured her all was in readiness outside, too. The duke would find nothing to criticize. Torches flamed along Tewksbury’s quarter-mile carriage drive. Footmen waited in the flaring light to help guests alight from conveyances that would range from Uncle Simon’s modest landau to coaches crested and trimmed in gold leaf.
    Flavia shivered. She wished the coaches, the river barges would never arrive. She dreaded tonight. She dreaded the natal day congratulations that would bubble so effusively from smiling mouths while malicious eyes narrowed and darted between her young figure and that of the aging duke. She shuddered. Then, sensing the eyes of servants upon her, she swept regally on.
    The duke waited in the Hall of Portraits in the west wing. As was his custom in unoccupied moments, he was studying the heroic-size paintings of titled Englishmen and equally titled Germans. His own likeness, Germanic and severe, hung in the place of honor.
    As Flavia entered, her heart drummed with the trepidation she always felt in the duke’s presence. Hearing the rustle of her gown, he turned abruptly. She dropped into a graceful curtsy. When she rose, he was fitting spectacles upon the bridge of his long Roman nose. Clasping his hands behind his stiff black brocade coat, he studied her without expression. As he did so, Flavia’s cheeks warmed in humiliation. She was the duke’s property. She was his to inspect. Still, she thought in a flush of anger, it is degrading. She fought the impulse to fidget under his gaze; the duke disliked females with fluttery hands.
    At last he removed the spectacles, folded the wire temples with maddening slowness, and replaced the spectacles in an inner breast pocket.
    “I approve,” he said in his chill, thready voice.
    Flavia let out her breath in