Provoked by Joanna Chambers

Author:Joanna Chambers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2013-07-23T05:00:00+00:00

Isabella Galbraith was ten times more beautiful than her friend Elizabeth, and just as many times colder. When David arrived to claim her for their set, she stated baldly that she had a headache coming on and didn’t feel terribly like dancing. Undaunted by her rudeness—though Elizabeth looked mortified on his behalf—David proposed a stroll around the ballroom instead, suggesting it might help clear her head.

Miss Galbraith couldn’t say no to that without being even more obviously rude. She stood reluctantly, placed her hand on the arm David offered, and they began to slowly perambulate the room.

For a few minutes, David kept the conversation light and general. Miss Galbraith was coolly polite and almost monosyllabic in her responses. Eventually, he decided to take a more direct tack.

“Have you spent much time in London, Miss Galbraith? Your father is a politician, is he not?”

“I’ve spent some time there,” she replied. “But I prefer Edinburgh.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

She was very lovely, but her smile was like a little bit of winter. “The young ladies of London are chiefly concerned with fashion and entertainment, I find.”

It was the first chink he’d seen in her formidable armour. A slight, distant smile graced her pretty lips, and her gaze was aloof. She was proud, this one. Confident of her superiority to everyone around her.

“Perhaps that is the sort of lady London gentlemen prefer?” David offered.

“Not all of them,” she answered too quickly to have given the question any real thought.

“No?” He was used to reading people in court. And he sensed in Isabella Galbraith a desire to confide, to boast, one that possibly warred with a need to be discreet. It was perhaps no bad thing that she considered him so below her notice.

“Some gentlemen like ladies who are well educated and who have opinions of their own,” she said, and there was a hint of reproof in her voice, as though she thought he must reside in the other camp.

“Having had the privilege of conversing with Miss Chalmers on several occasions,” David said truthfully, “I have certainly found her opinions most stimulating. You and Miss Chalmers were educated together, were you not?”

“We were.” Miss Galbraith’s smile was minutely warmer now. “At Miss Stair’s Seminary.”

David steered Miss Galbraith round a group of gentlemen who noted her beauty with covert glances though their conversation continued without pause. Once past them, David pressed home his advantage.

“So, do I take it that you have met at least one gentleman in London who is stimulated not only by beauty but also by intelligence?”

She actually blushed at that question, her eyelids lowering briefly to mask her gaze from him. Her proud expression seemed to soften a little.

“Perhaps,” she said, then added breezily, “They are not all dandies and rakes, at any rate.”

“No,” David dared. “Take Lord Murdo, for example.”

She glanced at him sharply, and he maintained his bland look with difficulty.

“I’m not sure what you seek to make Lord Murdo an example of, Mr. Lauriston,” she said. “Perhaps you could explain.

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