Sara Bennett Read Online Free Page A

girl,” he barked, his demeanor disapproving.
    Vivianna hesitated, while behind her on the street another coach was drawing up.
    “’Round the back!” he ordered again, giving her a little shove, and brushed by her to attend the new arrival.
    The doorman seemed to have made an assumption as to who or what she was—just as the hackney driver had done, she remembered now. What that assumption was, Vivianna did not know, but it did not really matter. This was maybe her only opportunity to get inside and confront Montegomery.
    Vivianna hurried back down the steps and in the direction that the doorman was impatiently pointing out to her. There was, she saw now, a narrow lane running down one side of the building. As she stood peering into the shadows, a cart rumbled up behind her, and she quickened her steps and found herself in a courtyard behind the house.
    The door into the back of the house had been left open and Vivianna darted inside as if she had every right to do so.
    The air was full of the smells of cooking and starch. A small room to her left looked to be a scullery. She kept walking down a long corridor of closed doors, leaving the kitchen and the laundry behind her. It wasn’t very well lit, and she felt her way by running one hand along the wall. Ahead, sounds of merriment grew louder. Another door, and a shorter corridor, and Vivianna blinked.
    Light, shining through a beaded curtain, and with it the movement of chattering people and the clink of glasses. Vivianna clutched the riding crop tightly in her hand, hidden by her cloak. She doubted she would need it now, but something made her loath to put it aside. The heaviness in her chest had increased, and she felt as if her corsets were too tight.
    “Montegomery can’t be far,” she murmured to herself, to keep up her courage.
    Vivianna lifted her chin, like Boudicca going intobattle, and made her entrance through the beaded curtain.
    Immediately a warning note rang in her head. This was a gentlemen’s club? Vivianna gazed about in surprise. It was very elegant, done up in the French Rococo style, with pale walls and much curling gold decoration. Mirrors were everywhere, and the reflections of dozens of candles gleamed like stars. The furnishings were elegant and uncomfortable-looking—definitely not the overstuffed chairs and sofas that were currently in vogue.
    It was not as Vivianna had expected. She had been imagining sober gentlemen sitting about in leather chairs, reading books and newspapers, and discussing the unruly House of Commons over glasses of brandy. There were plenty of gentlemen in this large, elegant room, but there were also many ladies. She also saw an enormous table spread lavishly with plates of prepared food and glasses of champagne.
    Were ladies permitted into the hallowed halls of a gentlemen’s club? Vivianna had not thought that was the case, but she was an innocent in such matters, and if necessary that was her defense. Perhaps this was a special evening, a gala evening, and ladies had been invited to attend? Vivianna blinked and looked more closely at the ladies in question. They were certainly very beautiful, and very richly dressed in brightly colored muslins and silks, reminiscent of an earlier age—Rome, perhaps, or Troy. Richly and scantily dressed.
    Her cheeks warmed. If Lady Greentree walked into such a place, she would turn and walk straight out of it again. What had that hackney driver said to her before she sent him away? Something about this being an “academy” run by an “abbess”? The warning note in Vivianna’s head became an entire orchestra. Again sheignored it. There was no time to change her plans now. Glimpses of women’s limbs through gossamer-thin silks was irrelevant to her right now. Perhaps, she thought doubtfully, London society was more liberal when it came to female attire than that in Yorkshire.
    Anyway, the fact that there were women present suited her plans; it enabled her to move about far