Encounter with Venus Read Online Free

do you look so ... so crestfallen?”
    Damn the woman, he thought in despair. On top of everything else, she’s blunt to a fault “Well, I... you see, er...” he mumbled.
    “Yes?” she asked, eyeing him askance.
    He had to take himself in hand. “Neither disappointed nor crestfallen, ma’am,” he said, forcing a smile. “Only surprised. I... er... expected someone else.”
    “Another Olivia Henshaw?” Her voice was heavy with sarcasm.
    “Well, I... I...”
    “Good God, Georgie,” Leyton muttered in his ear, “what’s wrong with you?”
    But George was saved further embarrassment by the butler’s announcement that dinner was served.
    “Let me take you in, Livy,” Leyton said, gently elbowing the stunned George aside and offering the lady his arm.
    Miss Henshaw rose and took it. As they passed the still-stricken George, Miss Henshaw did not look at him. Leyton urged her to go on ahead for a moment and, leaning close to George’s ear, hissed, “Don’t stand there like a chinch, man. Pull yourself together and escort Miss Whitmore in. She’s more your style, eh?”
    George gave himself a shake and did as he was bid. The hosts and their guests took their seats at the table, and dinner commenced with what seemed like perfectly ordinary good spirits. But to George, the atmosphere seemed unreal. Nightmarish. He hardly heard what was being said to him, though he managed to answer the questions being thrown at him by the lovely Miss Whitmore on his left and to obey the demands for attention of the overbearing Lady Sophy on his right. Although Miss Henshaw was seated on the other side of the table, as far from him as it was possible to be, he could not keep himself from looking over at her every few moments. It was a strange compulsion, not unlike the tendency to pick at a painful scab one is ordered not to touch. At one point Felicia remarked aloud that her brother seemed unusually quiet, but Lady Sophy patted his arm and declared she liked the quiet sort. Miss Whitmore, too, seemed content enough with his monosyllabic replies to her remarks. He himself thought he did quite well under the circumstances. After all, he was a man in mourning. A long-cherished dream had just died.
     
     

 
    FOUR
     
     
    Felecia was not happy. Her house party was not proceeding in the lively way she’d hoped. It seemed as if a fog of boredom had settled in over the entire assemblage. Here it was only ten o’clock in the evening, and everyone already looked sleepy. Poor Beatrice was singing “My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair” with such quavering nervousness that it caused the listeners to feel discomfort at first and boredom at last. Lady Sophy was nodding, Georgie was staring straight ahead in the most unusual abstraction, and her own dear Leyton was stifling a yawn.
    The song was entering its third chorus when the butler, Kelby, tiptoed in and whispered to Felicia that the Thomsetts had arrived. Thank goodness, she thought, leaping to her feet. Perhaps a pair of new arrivals will enliven us.
    Her abrupt movement caused Beatrice to stop right in the middle of a phrase. “Sorry,” Felicia murmured with a helpless shrug. “Do go on, Beatrice dear.” And with the stealthiest of steps, she followed Kelby out of the room.
    In the foyer Kelby was helping the newly arrived gentlemen with their coats. Felicia paused a moment to study them. The new arrivals were not quite as prepossessing as her husband had led her to expect. One was a large man with powerful shoulders and a broad midsection, weighing a good three stone more than his under-sized, pallid brother. But appearances were often deceiving, she warned herself. With a sprinkling of wit or some charm of address they might do very well. Swallowing her disappointment, she put on a smile and greeted them. “I’m sorry Leyton is not with me,” she apologized, “but we could not both desert our guests.”
    “Of course not, your ladyship,” the tall Thomsett said. “Our fault