Free The Lady Confesses by Carole Mortimer

Wilson’s dinner party, after all, having first removed all the lace from her blue silk gown in order to render it less fashionable. She was feeling distinctly uncomfortable amongst the local Devonshire gentry, all of whom were extremely well dressed and appeared well acquainted with each other already.
    But even that was preferable to the company of the irritating earl! ‘I am sure that any one of them would make you an admirable countess,’ she answered noncommittally.
    He eyed her mockingly. ‘Did I detect a slight emphasis on the word you there?’
    Elizabeth raised dark brows. ‘I do not believe so, no.’
    He gave an appreciative grin. ‘Liar!’
    She drew in a sharp breath. ‘You are altogether too fond of levelling that accusation at me, my lord.’
    Nathaniel sobered, his lids narrowing as he continued to look down at the young lady standing so coolly composed beside him. To all intents and purposes she should not have been noticeable at all in this room full of richly dressed and jewel-adorned women, and yet somehow it was the very simplicity of her appearance that had drawn more than one pair of admiring male eyes—including his own.
    She wore only a thin ribbon the same blue as her gown threaded through the darkness of her curls, and that gown was simplicity itself: high-waisted, with a scooped neckline that revealed the soft swell of her breasts, an inch or two of the soft ivory of her arms visible between the tiny puff sleeves and the above-elbow length of her white lace gloves.
    She was, Nathaniel acknowledged with a frown, a perfect diamond set amongst much gaudier jewels. His mouth thinned. ‘You must be disappointed that Sir Rufus is so late arriving?’
    Having received a bouquet of white roses from that gentleman only yesterday—the first flowers she’d ever received from a gentleman—along with a note that simply read ‘Tennant’, she was not in the least disappointed by the man’s late arrival this evening. In fact, she felt relieved at this delay in seeing him again, having absolutely no idea what the roses, or the brevity of the signature on the card that had accompanied them, was meant to convey. Red roses she could have understood as being a sign of admiration, or perhaps even yellow roses, but what did white roses signify? As for the terseness of the man’s signature on the card…!
    She had written Sir Rufus a short and polite note thanking him for the flowers, of course, along with the news that she would be present at Mrs Wilson’s dinner party, after all, in case he thought she had deliberately lied to him, all the time aware she did not know if she even liked him, or understood this apparently uncharacteristic interest in her.
    Her uncertainty was not helped by the fact that she, and apparently every other woman in the room, had been rendered breathless by Nathaniel Thorne’s godlike appearance this evening.
    Elizabeth might have succeeded in ignoring the earl for the main part this past two days, but it was impossible to ignore such resplendent maleness that he displayed this evening, in his perfectly tailored black evening clothes and snowy-white linen. The many candles that illuminated the room turned his hair a deep, burnished gold, his eyes appeared a deep and glowing amber, and cast the handsomeness of his features into a sculpture of masculine beauty.
    Certainly Sir Rufus Tennant—when he deigned to arrive—or indeed any of the other men present this evening, could not possibly hope to compete with such a vision of male elegance and smouldering sensuality!
    ‘Very disappointed,’ Elizabeth answered him stiltedly, her awareness of him so profound that the shortness of her fingernails dug painfully into the palms of her hands as she clenched them at her sides. ‘And which of those three young ladies do you most find attractive?’
    Nathaniel was not in the least surprised that Elizabeth had so neatly turned the conversation from herself and on to him; he had realised