A Most Unusual Match Read Online Free Page A

Regardless of Devlin Stone’s too-perceptive gaze, apparently he only muddled her senses. If thoughts of him lessened the vertigo, she’d recite his name a hundred times a day.
    Cautiously Thea straightened and headed for the hotel.
    An hour later, dressed for her afternoon at the races, she left Mrs. Chudd reading a book and sipping fresh limeade. A spare woman with iron-gray hair, Mrs. Chudd was exactly the sort of chaperone Thea required: indifferent, and incurious. After confiding to her about the spells of vertigo, the woman had nodded once, then remarked that she wasn’t a wet nurse but if called upon would do her duty. Today, her “Mind you use your parasol else you’ll turn red as one of those Indians,” constituted Mrs. Chudd’s only gesture at chaperonage. At least this was Saratoga Springs,where guests discarded societal strictures like a too-tight corset.
    After leaving a note of apology for the desk clerk to have delivered to Mrs. Van Eyck, Thea joined a dozen other guests in queue for one of the hotel wagons headed for the track. She felt awkward; there were those who disapproved of the entire horse-racing culture, denouncing the sport for its corruption and greed. Until she arrived at Saratoga, Thea had never paid attention one way or the other, though she remarked to someone at her dinner table how thrilling it would be to watch the powerful creatures thunder down the track at amazing speeds.
    Today, however, was a hunting expedition, not a pleasure excursion. The tenor of her thoughts stirred up fresh guilt. After three weeks Thea could mostly block the insistent tug by remembering how her grandfather looked behind bars the only time she visited him in that foul hole of a cell. Voice cracking, fine tremors racking his stooped form, Charles begged her not to return. Because she saw that her presence hurt him beyond measure, Thea gave her promise.
    Promises made to loved ones must be kept.
    No matter how despicable her actions now, she would never break her word like her father with all his picture-postcard promises to come home, or abandon anyone at birth like her mother did Thea. Richard Langston and Hetty Pickford—what a legacy. Yet never once had her grandfather condemned their only child for the behavior of her parents.
    Impatient with herself, Theodora glanced down at her blue-and-white costume, self-consciously running a finger over the perky red braid trimming the skirt and basque while she turned her mind to the afternoon ahead. A tingleof anticipation shot through her at the prospect of matching wits with Devlin Stone again.
    She’d thought long and hard while she changed into her present costume. For some reason Mr. Stone had singled her out of a crowd of thousands of available, far more beautiful females. Based upon Thea’s admittedly scant personal knowledge of romantic liaisons, all that was necessary to assure a gentleman’s continued pursuit would be to indicate her willingness to be pursued. Very well, then. With a bit of pluck and a whole bucketful of luck, through encouraging Mr. Stone’s interest in her, in turn she hoped to procure enough insight into Edgar Fane’s habits to at last secure an entrée into the scoundrel’s inner circle of friends. She refused to crawl home in shame and defeat.
    Her tactics troubled Thea. If she ever blew the dust off her Bible and strove to establish a better communication with the Lord, she would doubtless spend many years on her knees, begging forgiveness for the sordidness of her present behavior. Even though he did not approve of her decision to pursue justice, Grandfather had understood her motives. Hopefully God would understand, as well, and help her achieve her goal. He was, after all, a God of justice. If You help me now, perhaps I’ll believe You’re also a God of love. If God helped her in this quest, perhaps she could also forgive Him for allowing her parents to abandon her, and an