Free The Remarkable Miss Frankenstein by Minda Webber Page A

through the thickening crowd to where she conversed with the two men, a false smile plastered on her face.
    Clair didn’t much care for places where the general conversation was insipid and uninspired; she still remembered her years as a debutante, where the most common focal point of conversations had been the chance of rain. She had been a radical, turning the talk to explanations of condensation and transpiration in the rain cycle. She had added the carbon cycles as well. The memory caused her to grin. Yes, she had been a true rebel, so much so that the younger men of the ton remembered to this day, and were even now leaving her alone. The pig incident of eight months before hadn’t helped much either. She was now a social pariah to most of the ton.
    Viscount Evans interrupted her musings. “My dear Miss Frankenstein, is it true what they say about the monster?”
    The viscount reminded her of a fat owl, Clair decided, cocking her head and regarding him intently. But he was certainly not wise. She was irritated by his reference to her cousin as “the monster.” “His name is Frederick,” she chided gently.
    Lord Price and Viscount Evans both raised their brows. Still, Clair continued trying to explain the unexplainable. “We do not think of him as a monster. He is much like any man, with a tad more stuffing than most.”
    Clair couldn’t resist glancing at Viscount Evans’s paunchy waistline.
    “But that is just the point, my dear,” Lord Price laughed.
    The laugh caused goosebumps on her arms. Clair had always wondered how such a thin, harmless man could have such a haunting laugh. But, then, Lord Vince Price’s laugh was rather his signature, in a town where signatures were worth their weight in gold, if one could be designated a nonpareil or an original.
    “He is not just a man. Why, I heard that he is rather… well endowed in some aspects,” Viscount Evans finished with a speculative leer to his eye.
    Clair blushed, knowing exactly to what he was referring. It was true that Frederick was rather massive in all areas. And knowing Uncle Victor, it was possible, just possible, that a nip and snip here and there… She blushed even brighter as she remembered the rumored affair with the Countess of Deville, and that her own favorite stallion Pegasus had become a gelding after the great electrical storm of 1819 and Frederick’s creation.
    “By the deuce, Evans!” Lord Price admonished. “What a rum-cursed thing to say to this lovely young lady. You forget yourself.”
    “Indeed you do,” Ian broke in with a clipped, icy tone, which matched his frigid countenance. “Miss Frankenstein is a lady in the strictest sense.”
    Viscount Evans’s face was pale. He stammered, “I-I meant no disrespect. I know Miss Frankenstein is… a lady of the… ut-utmost quality, but she is also a lady of science. Ladies of scientific study enjoy a bit m-more freedom in both speech and thinking.”
    Ian stepped closer to Clair, partially blocking her.
    But Clair knew the truth when she heard it; Evans had meant no harm. She had been given much free rein while growing up, in a day and age where other young ladies were put on pedestals and left there to mold. She lived in a time when to have a brain was manly, and absurd for a woman. Yet Clair not only used her intelligence, she spoke earnestly and brightly about subjects upon which many men were less than informed. Older men found that fascinating. Younger ones found her daunting, while women found her peculiar.
    Gracefully, Clair placed a restraining arm on Ian’s wrist. “I know the viscount meant no offense. He and I have discussed matters of scientific import before. He has an inquiring mind.” Then she added for Ian’s ears only, “I sometimes fear it overrules his tongue and brain.”
    Ian narrowed his gaze on Viscount Evans. “I don’t think this particular question has much to do with science, but more to do with a morbid curiosity of the titillating.”
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