Free Loving Lady Marcia by Kieran Kramer Page A

anyone else of her acquaintance in the upper ten thousand could see her and say hello.
    Mama had predicted yesterday that she’d attract a great deal of notice, and she’d been right. Visitors came to their table in a steady stream, much to the delight of Janice and Cynthia, who adored company, especially of the young male variety. Marcia, however, having had her romantic illusions destroyed early, was sure her extreme elusiveness accounted for her popularity with the gentlemen.
    Not that she cared one jot—
    Except for the fact that Lysandra was taking discreet glances at her, and her expression was quite sour.
    “The soon-to-be spinster and ex-headmistress can show some sparkle, after all,” Janice whispered in her ear during a brief respite from the deluge of company. “Lady Ennis looks rather jealous of you.”
    “She does, doesn’t she?” Marcia murmured into the din. She felt a silly satisfaction.
    “What are you two talking about?” Cynthia asked them. “What’s sparkling?”
    “The ice, in the sunlight from the window,” Janice explained.
    “Yes, and with all the hubbub, I’ve neglected mine,” Marcia told them, and was about to scoop up the last bit of her peppermint confection when a shadow fell across the table.
    She looked up, and a tiny voice in her head said, Let it melt .
    Because Finn stood before her. Her Finn. The one who was supposed to be living in America.
    Seeing the face of her first love—her first lover—after all this time caused her heart to pound painfully against her rib cage. Neither could she breathe at all well.
    Perhaps, she thought, the social game isn’t so banal, after all .
    “Marcia.” His golden voice, the timbre deeper now, sounded incredulous. “ Lady Marcia. Is it really you? I was walking by and saw you through the window.”
    Through the window? What was it with the Lattimore brothers and their eagle-eyed vision?
    A picture of Lord Chadwick assailed her: the persistent, ever-demanding earl, finding her in the dressmaker’s shop, then pursuing her down the street, asking her if she’d found her perfect life—only a half hour before her new life at Oak Hall had fallen apart.
    She held her spoon in midair. “H-hello, Mr. Lattimore.”
    Finn .
    He was more beautiful than ever. His sun-bronzed skin and hair were testament to his long absence from English soil. And he’d added heft to his youthful form. He looked stronger, harder, older—a real man now.
    No longer a boy. And she—she was no longer that young, impressionable girl.
    He grinned, and her mouth went dry. “It is you.”
    “You remember my sisters, Lady Janice and Lady Cynthia, don’t you?” she managed to say.
    “Of course.” He bestowed a charming smile upon each of them but then turned back to her with obvious eagerness. “I’m meeting my brother in five minutes to look at a horse at Tattersall’s. I’m back in Town permanently, you know.”
    “No, I didn’t.” She was shocked to find that for a split second, she was vastly annoyed. How could she concentrate on getting her job back when Finn was in London?
    But that split second disappeared quickly. She couldn’t help noticing his lips, the lips that had kissed her so well. She wouldn’t dare look at the rest of him … she simply remembered, with a pang near her heart, how perfect life had felt when she’d been cradled in his arms.
    It was better than any feeling you’ve ever had as a headmistress, a horribly wicked voice in her head whispered to her.
    “But I must know before I go,” he said hoarsely, with a hint of hope, “will you be at the Livingstons’ ball tonight?”
    She could see her sisters watching her and prayed neither would kick her under the table.
    “No. I’m afraid not.” It was the hardest no she’d ever delivered, but if there was one thing she’d learned at Oak Hall, it was that no was a powerful word. And she’d said it whenever the security of her students, her teachers, and her school was at