Just One Season in London Read Online Free

weather’s been so pleasant this spring.”
    In the gardens?
    â€œBut I thought—”
    â€œSophie,” Lady Ryecroft said. “Not now.” She put her hand on Randall’s arm and let him lead her up the steps.
    Sophie dawdled for a moment, thinking. There really were only two possible explanations, she concluded. The first was that Lady Brindle’s son was so oblivious that he wasn’t aware his mother had suffered an accident—which seemed unlikely.
    But the second was that there was no sprained ankle at all, and Lady Ryecroft knew it. Judging by her lack of surprise just now, she must have known it even before they had left home.
    So why had Sophie’s mother dragged her across half of Surrey and the better part of Sussex in order to visit an injured old friend, if the old friend wasn’t injured after all?
    ***
    Grosvenor Square was lined with houses, and Rye had no idea which one might be Lady Stone’s. But no one else on the street seemed to know either. The costermonger selling pies at the corner goggled at him when he asked, and said he’d like to know how he was supposed to know who was whom in the quality—at least, Rye thought that was what he said; he’d had to disentangle the man’s Cockney accent. A flower girl walking along the pavement only giggled and offered to sell him a bunch of violets. He gave her a coin and tried in vain to refuse the flowers, but she pressed them into his hand anyway.
    So he was holding a tight little handful of blooms when he turned round from talking to the flower girl and almost ran down a lady who had just stepped from a carriage onto the pavement. The violets burst from his hand and sprayed over her, catching in her hair, in the basket she carried, in the dark braid that trimmed her deep blue cloak.
    She gave a gasp of annoyance and glared up at him.
    â€œI beg your pardon,” Rye said. His gaze swept over her. She was young, though hardly a schoolgirl—twenty perhaps, or even older. She was not dressed like a young lady either. Her hair was caught up in a neat, not-quite-schoolmarmish chignon, under a plain dark chip of a hat—not one of the elaborate creations the young ladies of the ton commonly wore. Her gloves were serviceable rather than elegant—tan leather, but not the finest-grained kid. As she brushed at the violets on her shoulder, he saw that the fingertips were worn. Her cloak was fastened with an ordinary frog, not buttoned with gold.
    Even more telltale was the fact that her face was not fashionably pale; this woman had been kissed by the sun. There were a couple of freckles on her nose, something that would likely have sent a society miss and her mother into strong hysterics the moment they were noticed.
    Rye thought they were charming.
    There was a violet caught in her lashes, right at the corner of her eye. She put up a hand to brush it away, and Rye found himself stepping forward. “Let me. It seems to be tangled, and if you pull at it, you might get pollen in your eye.”
    She stood still as he leaned closer yet. No wonder the flower had caught; he’d never seen lashes so long and full, so curly and so dark. They were a shade darker than her hair—which wasn’t simply brown, as he had thought, but a rich mixture of chestnut and honey, glinting in a sudden shaft of sunlight.
    For a moment the noises of the square faded away—no costermonger’s call, no rattle of carriage wheels—and he was caught up, surrounded by the scent of violets and the brush of his finger against her temple, where the skin was so soft that even through his glove he knew he had never touched anything so fine…
    The violet came loose, and he stood holding it and feeling foolish.
    â€œHave you finished?” she said coolly, and Rye realized he had grasped her arm, as if it had been necessary to hold her closely while he plucked at the flower with his other