Midsummer Delights by Eloisa James

Author:Eloisa James
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Ever After

London

December 31, 1812

A New Year’s Ball given by Lady Bracknell

It was Miss Violet Leighton’s considered—if cynical—opinion that fairy tales were poppycock. How could they not be? Her father had quite ruled out stableboys; kissable frogs seemed to be far and few between; and the gentlemen she’d met were more suited to a farce than a fairy tale.

In short: marriage was ever after without the promise of “happily,” a chilling thought that had led her to refuse seven proposals.

At age twenty, her father saw her as hopelessly pigheaded. Her little sister Millicent, on the other hand, saw her as hopelessly romantic, still waiting for her prince to come.

Violet saw herself as a spinster. For . . . ever after.

“He’s here!” Millie was panting audibly as she popped up at Violet’s elbow, her eyes shining with excitement.

Violet’s heart skipped a beat, but she gave her sister an admonishing look, turned aside, and directed a lavish smile at the gentleman to whom she had been speaking. The last thing she wanted was to appear like a social-climbing ninny before a leader of the ton. “I do apologize,” she said, “I didn’t quite follow what you said about ghouls.”

“Gules, not ghouls,” Sir Dauphine La Foole said, with the tone of a pompous schoolmaster. “I merely mentioned that I am descended lineally from the French La Fooles. Though I was knighted in Ireland, I wear the hereditary armorial colors, checked azure and gules. Which, my dear Miss Leighton, is one of the heraldic tinctures, and can be described as dark red.” He smoothed the sleeve of his burgundy coat.

“Violet!” Millie plucked her sleeve. “Didn’t you hear me? In the entryway . . . He has arrived!”

“I am quite fortunate in that my coloring proved to be complimentary to my family’s armorial colors.” La Foole eyed Violet in an assessing sort of way. “Your coloring, Miss Leighton, would be charmingly offset by azure.”

“You are embarrassing me,” Violet hissed at Millie. “Do go away; you’re being rude.”

With an irritated snort, her sister flounced off. But to Violet’s mortification, La Foole had heard all. “I gather I must return you to your chaperone, Miss Leighton, so that you may welcome this mysterious arrival?” His eyes were faintly mocking under the flop of yellow curls covering his forehead. “One might assume that you have been hiding a fiancé, from the anticipation in your sister’s tone.”

“Nonsense,” Violet said a bit sharply. “Millicent is merely teasing, as siblings do. When I was a schoolgirl—a child, really—I felt a brief infatuation for a friend of my brother’s; he has been traveling abroad for some years. Earlier today we learned that he has finally returned to England and my siblings are making a joke of it. Of course, I haven’t seen or thought about him in the meantime.”

That was a lie, but one could hardly confess that the man who had broken one’s heart was about to enter the ballroom.

“How long has this gentleman been abroad?”

“Four years, or thereabouts. Really, Sir Dauphine,

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