False Angel Read Online Free Page B

course. But if she’d refused to have any of the most eligible partis from the cream of ton society when she’d had the chance, the best of a few remaining bachelors of the proper age that her small district had to offer weren’t likely to make her long for wedded bliss. Especially since she spent a great deal of time avoiding them, as well. No, attracting the gentlemen, wherever she happened to be, had never been the problem. Or rather, it had always been a problem in itself.
    The fact was that she always had difficulty with the way she interested gentlemen since she’d come of age. Although she knew it wasn’t fair, it always annoyed her when a male immediately responded to her looks. Then too, she knew, to her sorrow, that her physical appearance often dissuaded other females from befriending her, even if her reputation did not But just as she often felt that she stepped outside herself to watch in horror whenever she committed some social suicide, as she had last night, she always felt as though her physical person belonged to some other female. And one, moreover, that she did not care for at all. It wasn’t surprising that she was not the greatest admirer of her own style.
    Her hair was dark, and that was the fashion this season. But it wasn’t black as a daw’s wing such as the Incomparable Miss Merriman boasted. It was only very dark brown, so dark as to appear to be made of smoke when she brushed it out at night It didn’t curl riotously as Caro Lamb’s did, though, but rather it lay smoothly until it came to the end of its length, and then it tended to spring up in frothy waves, as though it regretted its earlier sobriety.
    Her skin was pale, but there were no shy pinks to tint it such as she admired in other fair ladies’ cheeks, rather it was the crimson damask rose that lay beneath her skin. Her eyes were not the blue of lakes and pools that poets found so entrancing in their mistresses’ regard. Hers were large and generously lashed, to be sure, but they were dark brown to echo her hair and not the summer sky. Her nose was straight, but it too tended to give way to levity at its end, for it turned up just at the tip. Her lips were rosy and full. Too full, she thought. As a besotted and sottish fellow during that disastrous last year in London had whined as he attempted to excuse his advances after she’d boxed his ears, it seemed as though she had already just been soundly kissed, her lips had looked so swollen and ripe for him.
    That was only part of the difficulty, Leonora thought as she drew her wrap about her. For if her lips gave men strange fancies, why then, no matter how she draped it, and the fashion of the day did not permit too much coverage, her form gave them even stranger ones. She was high and full-bosomed, and her small waist drew in only to flare out again in rounded hips that gave way to long and rounded limbs. Not as a lady’s figure should be, she thought, like Mama’s small trim form or even her elder sister’s tall, thin elegance. Rather she wore the blatant body of a gypsy or a sultan’s favorite. She couldn’t blame the gentlemen for what they thought her since that last Season, even if it had not been for her actions. They might admire such looks, but she never could.
    When Annabelle had arrived that windy night three months ago, with her poor bedraggled traveling cases at her side and the family bible in her hand to prove that she was at least related to them, Leonora had only needed to take one look at her. It only took that long for her to decide that there stood the beauty in the family. For apart from her clothes and bewildered expression, of course, Annabelle perfectly suited her idea of precisely how a lady should look.
    Annabelle was small and delicately made, just as ladies were classically supposed to be. The first gowns that Leonora gave her that first morning after she had come to stay with them, so that she might have something fitting to wear immediately,