Pleasure For Pleasure by Eloisa James

Author:Eloisa James [Eloisa James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061795237
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-03-16T05:00:00+00:00

21

From The Earl of Hellgate, Chapter the Seventeenth

I name her, Dear Reader, after one of Shakespeare’s fairies, for she was as elusive and sweet to me as one of those sprites. You will loathe me for the truth of it…but when I beheld her gentle countenance, I burned with the desire to possess her. And yet marry her I could not…she was married to a worthy burgher. I tremble as I write the words:

The bonds of matrimony did not stop me.

Lucius Felton’s box at Ascot was, without doubt, the most luxurious on the grounds. The King’s box was a rather simple structure, lined in red velvet, and boasting chairs that were uncomfortably thronelike. But Felton had decided to take a box at Ascot only after he married, and he had a particular fondness for enclosed racing boxes. Since there wasn’t one to be had at Ascot, he bribed the manager of the racetrack a fabulous amount—some said it was enough to run the entire operation for the next year—and built himself an elegant little box, with a roof to keep off the sun and rain. It was open along the track, naturally, but it extended far enough back so that there were a few little rooms off it, necessary to a lady’s comfort when her husband (like Mr. Felton) was a devout enthusiast of the track.

There was, Josie discovered with extreme pleasure, a small retiring room for ladies, boasting a chaise longue. “Tess does have a lovely life,” she said, sighing at the beauty of it all. The retiring room was an oasis of calm luxury, papered in silk the color of a spring beech leaf. When she walked in, Sylvie was already there, carefully turning her pink lips to a more intense peony color.

“Your Tess is indeed a very lucky woman,” Sylvie agreed. “I am sorry that I did not see Mr. Felton before she did.”

Josie smiled at Sylvie’s frank assessment. “You might not have liked him.”

“I would like anyone with his resources. And may I say that I am glad to be out of the marriage market before you appeared?” she remarked, looking Josie up and down. “Now that you have shed those strange undergarments, you are a rival.”

Josie burst into laughter. “No one can say that you aren’t generous, Sylvie.”

“I speak a truth,” she said, with her little French shrug. “I am of course slimmer than you, and I think that my nose is a trifle smaller, but I have not that air of”—she waved her hands—“séduisant, that you have.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t speak French,” Josie said, rubbing a little bit of lip color on her lips as well.

“It means you look like a good bedfellow,” Sylvie said baldly. And at Josie’s giggle, “Did I say it wrongly? I work hard at this English, but it is difficult.”

“I am sure that you look like an entrancing bedfellow yourself, Sylvie!”

“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t because I won’t be. I’m not very interested in that sort of thing. But luckily for me, there are men who feel as I do.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.