A Most Unusual Match Read Online Free

strolling the Broadway. The energy that had fueled her encounter with Mr. Stone leaked away with each step until her feet barely lifted from the ground. A dozen yards from the Grand Union Hotel she stopped underneath the base of one of the elm trees shading the Broadway, needing a moment to collect herself. After several calming breaths, the spinning sensation receded; she fixed her gaze upon a fancy-goods storefront full of ladies’ gloves while she thought about her reaction to the stranger.
    How had this Mr. Stone known she was acting? His eyes, a mesmerizing blend of gray, slate blue and…and ice, had pierced every one of her painstakingly formulated masks. At the moment she should be prostrate with vertigo, her reaction to a bone-searing insecurity spawned early in her childhood. She kept this weakness relentlessly hidden from everyone but Mrs. Chudd, the widowed neighbor she’d hired at Grandfather’s insistence to be her companion “while you work this mad scheme out of your system.” Until the previous year, most of the attacks had disappeared altogether. Then Grandfather was arrested and spent a week in jail—for passing counterfeit money. Themoney Edgar Fane had paid him. The police and several Secret Service operatives had treated an innocent Charles Langston like a common criminal, but they hadn’t even charged Edgar Fane, the lying, cheating snake.
    Thea wasn’t sure who she despised more, Edgar Fane or the sanctimonious Secret Service operatives with their closed minds and weak spines.
    Edgar Fane was a villain. Thea had dedicated her life to proving his guilt, regardless of debilitating spells of vertigo. She owed that life to Grandfather, but would never enjoy it until she found a way to restore the twinkle in his eye and his wilted faith in God. For Thea, waiting for the Almighty to pursue vengeance was no longer an option.
    Dizzy spells, however, might prove to be something of a conundrum. Certainly her first few brushes with Mr. Fane triggered the symptoms, probably because he’d ignored her. It was also turning out to be far more difficult than she imagined, projecting an attraction for a man she planned to skewer with the pitchfork of justice.
    Devlin Stone claimed to know Edgar Fane. Per haps…?
    Perhaps she could jump off a cliff, as well. It might be less hazardous than pursuing Devlin Stone, who made her pulse flutter and caused a most unusual sensation in the region of her heart. Apparently Mr. Stone triggered a multitude of strange feelings, but not a single swirl of vertigo.
    And he might be the only person able to help her.
    Thea’s hands clenched the Chinese fan. Mr. Stone’s threat to expose her to her imaginary fiancé Neville could be discounted, but the threat itself would have to be dealt with. She’d learned Edgar Fane planned to leave Saratoga in three weeks. Less than a month…
    Another swirl of dizziness batted her, a warning she would do well to heed.
    So don’t think about him, or Devlin Stone’s unsubtle threats, Theodora. Think about how to persuade him to share everything he knows about Edgar Fane. Think about Charles Langston, and retribution. Think about flinging evidence at the Secret Service and humiliating them as they had humiliated her Grandfather and ruined his life.
    But instead her mind reached back to the instant Mr. Stone had touched her. Strength, vitality and authority wrapped around Thea as securely as his fingers enclosed her arm. The impulse to confess everything had overwhelmed her senses, a terrifying prospect. Worse than the dreaded vertigo, she had been tempted to cling to a stranger, because…because unlike her reaction to Edgar Fane and despite all common sense, she had been drawn to Mr. Stone like penny nails to a powerful magnet.
    There. She’d admitted the truth, to her conscience at least.
    The whirling inside her head abruptly diminished.
    She supposed she ought to be grateful.