Circle of Spies by Roseanna M. White

Author:Roseanna M. White
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736951043
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers, Inc.

Nineteen

Marietta had all she could do to keep her pleasant smile pinned to her face and her hand relaxed against Slade’s arm. Anger wanted to push through her fingers, and the pain from a headache contorted her face into a wince as they started up the stairs.

Slade’s fingers brushed over hers. She glanced up into his face and saw concern knitting his brows.

“Are you feeling all right?”

The question made her breath catch in her throat. Mama had seen the pain—Mama always did—but no one else had. “Just a little headache.”

His frown didn’t ease. “Do you want to leave?”

The hopefulness in his tone teased out a smile, but she shook her head—a mistake, that—and then nodded to a passing congressman. “What I want is to enjoy the play my grandparents have been eager to watch, let all of society see that I am through with mourning Lucien and not on the arm of Dev, and give my overbearing brothers a few swift kicks to the posterior.”

That last part she barely even muttered, but Slade’s chuckle said he heard her. “My fault. I think I looked at you wrong.”

Why should that make heat sweep over her? She already knew he thought her attractive. And she had commissioned this dress months ago to elicit reactions when she reentered society, having it modeled on a green gown that had left the Hugheses breathless. Though at the time she certainly hadn’t imagined wearing this one first to a play in Washington on the arm of a detective rather than Dev.

Perhaps she ought to have left it in the closet with the ill-fated green one she never intended to don again.

“They deserve no excuses to be made for them.” She tossed a narrow-eyed glance over her shoulder at her brothers, both of whom still scowled her way, despite their wives’ obvious attempts to distract them with conversation. “Those two have always been this way. Virtually ignoring me day in and day out, as if I am nothing but a pretty doll upon a shelf, until I dare to assert some individuality in public, and then they suddenly remember they are older brothers charged with protecting me.”

Stephen was the only one of the three who had ever bothered to talk to her. To try to understand why she behaved as she did.

Isaac and Hez just patted her head day to day and then blustered and fumed when she didn’t act as they thought she should. Granted, she wouldn’t be in this mess if she had met their standards all her life. But tonight she had done nothing wrong. She was, in fact, distancing herself publicly from Dev, which ought to please them.

Slade hummed. “I can understand their protectiveness.”

“It isn’t protectiveness; it’s control. And I am sick to death of all these men in my life thinking they know so much better than I what I need or want.” Again, she spoke quietly, fastening a belying smile to her lips for all the passing families she hadn’t seen much in the past year.

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