The Firebrand. Susan Wiggs

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ part did you find so interesting?”

      Lucy was chagrined to realize that she could not recall one single word of the past forty minutes. “All of it,” she said hastily.

      “Right.” He leaned in closer. “So now I know what bores you. Suppose you tell me what excites you.”

      She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, for no man had ever voluntarily made small talk with her. He was probably setting her up for some sort of humiliating moment. Some social faux pas so he and his cronies could have a chuckle at her expense. So what? she thought. It wouldn’t be the first time someone made her the butt of a joke. She’d survived moments like that before. Many moments.

      “Ha,” she muttered. “As if I would tell you.”

      “I’m leaving,” he said. “Come with me.”

      Lucy ignored him. If she got up now, people would notice. They might think she was following him. They might even believe she had “designs” on him.

      As if Lucy Hathaway would ever have such a thing as designs on a man.

      “Quickly,” he urged, his whisper barely audible. “Before he gets his second wind.”

      The audience, restless and trying not to show it, buzzed with low, polite conversation while the evangelist refreshed himself. At last Lucy could resist no longer. She had to see who this rude, mellow-voiced stranger was. With the bold curiosity that caused her such trouble in social situations, she turned to stare at him.

      Heavens to Betsy. He was as handsome as a sun god.

      Her eyes, no longer glazing over, studied him with unabashed fascination. Long-legged. Broad-shouldered. Deep brown hair, neatly combed. An impeccably tailored suit of clothes. A face of flawless, square-jawed strength and symmetry such as one saw on civic monuments and statues of war heroes. Yet this particular face was stamped with just a hint of wicked humor. Who the devil was he?

      She didn’t know him at all, had never seen him before.

      If she had, she would have remembered. Because the unfamiliar warmth that curled through her when she looked at him was not a sensation one would easily forget. Lucy Hathaway was suddenly contemplating “designs.”

      He smiled, not unkindly. She caught herself staring at his mouth, its shape marvelously set off by the most intriguing cleft in his chin. “Randolph Birch Higgins,” he said with a very slight inclination of his head.

      Guiltily she glanced around, but to her relief noticed that they sat alone in the rear of the salon. She cleared her throat. “I beg your pardon?”

      “Please don’t. I was simply introducing myself. My name is Randolph Higgins.”

      “Oh.” She felt as gauche as a schoolgirl unprepared for lessons.

      “I believe the usual response is ‘How do you do?’ followed by a reciprocal introduction,” he suggested.

      What a condescending, pompous ass, she thought. She resented the marvelous color of his eyes. Such an arrogant man did not deserve to have perfect leaf-green eyes. Even more, she resented him for making her wish she was not so skinny and black-haired, pinch-mouthed and awkward. She was not an attractive woman and she knew it. Ordinarily that would not bother her. Yet tonight, she wished with humiliating fervor that she could be pretty.

      “Miss Lucy Hathaway,” she said stiffly.

      “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Hathaway.” He turned slightly toward her, waiting.

      She had the oddest sensation of being alone with this man. On some level she perceived people milling around the large outer salon behind them. Through the arched passageway, she vaguely noticed ladies laughing and flirting, men stepping through the French doors to light up their cigars in the blustery night. In the lecture room, people spoke in low tones as they awaited the next portion of the address. Yet a strange electricity stung the air around Lucy and the man called Randolph Higgins, seeming to wall them off into a place of their own.

      “Now you’re supposed to say ‘It’s a pleasure to make your ac—’”

      “I don’t need lessons in idle conversation,” she said. Lord knew, her mother had taught her that well enough. Ensconced in a North Division mansion, Viola Hathaway had elevated frivolity to an art form.

      “Then we should move on to meaningful conversation,” he said.

      “What makes you think you and I could have a meaningful conversation?” she asked. Her parents had spent a fortune to drill her in manners, but all the deportment lessons in the world had failed to keep Lucy from speaking her mind.

      She wished Mr. Higgins would go away. Far away. A man who produced this sort of discomfiting reaction in her had no possible use except…

      Lucy was nothing if not honest with herself. Perhaps she should quit trying to feel peevish and admit that she was most inappropriately intrigued. A sudden, sinful inspiration took hold. Perhaps he could be useful. As a New Woman who adhered fervently—if only in theory, alas—to the radical notion of free love, Lucy felt obliged to practice what she preached. Thus far, however, men found her unattractive and annoyingly intellectual. Mr. Higgins, at least, seemed to find her interesting. This was a first for Lucy, and she didn’t want to let the opportunity slip away.

      “You’re looking at me like a cat in the creamery,” he whispered. “Why is that?”

      She snapped her head around and faced front, appalled by her own intoxicating fantasy. “You’re imagining things, sir. You do not know me at all.”

      The lecture started up again, a boring recitation about the ancient founders—male, of course—of the Christian faith. She tilted her chin up and fixed an expression of tolerant interest on her face. She’d promised Miss Boylan not to argue with the preacher; her radical views often got her in trouble, tainting the reputation of Miss Boylan’s school. Instead she kept thinking about the stranger beside her. What wonderful hands he had—large and strong, beautifully made for hard work or the most delicate of tasks.

      Lucy tried to push her attraction away to the hidden place in her heart where she kept all her shameful secrets.

      Men were trouble. No one knew this better than Lucy Hathaway. She was that most awkward of creatures, the social misfit. Maligned, mocked, misunderstood. At dancing lessons when she was younger, the boys used to draw straws in order to determine who would have the ill luck to partner the tall, dark, intense girl whose only asset was her father’s fortune. At the debutante balls and soirees she attended in later years, young men would place wagers on how many feet she would trample while waltzing, how many people she would embarrass with her blunt questions and how many times her poor mother would disappear behind her fan to hide the blush of shame her daughter induced.

      In a last-ditch effort to find their daughter a proper place in the world, Colonel and Mrs. Hathaway had sent her away to be “finished.” Like a wedding cake in need of icing, she was dispatched to the limestone bastion called the Emma Wade Boylan School for Young Ladies, and expected to come out adorned in feminine virtues.

      Women whose well-heeled papas could afford the exorbitant tuition attended the lakeside institution. There they hoped to attain the bright polish of refinement that would attract a husband. Even those who were pocked СКАЧАТЬ