Free Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride by Mary Balogh Page B

just opened the doors into the house. But he released her and raised her hand to his lips instead.
    “Until tomorrow evening,” he said. “You will reserve the opening set for me at the Chisleys’ ball?”
    “Yes, of course,” she said.
    “And the supper dance?” His smile had never failed to make her insides somersault.
    She smiled back. “Yes,” she said. “And the supper dance, my lord.”
    She was still smiling as she entered the house alone and ran lightly upstairs to her room. Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night he would kiss her. Everything in his look and his smile had said so. She felt a surging of renewed happiness. She could scarcely wait for tomorrow evening.
    I T WAS QUITE BY accident that the Earl of Thornhill saw Jennifer entering the library with her cousin and a maid late the following morning. He was with two acquaintances but excused himself and followed the ladies inside. It was too good an opportunity to be missed.
    A few people were reading the papers. Some of them looked up to see who the new arrival was. A few more people were browsing over the shelves of books. Miss Winwood was among them, at a different shelf from her cousin. The maid stood quietly inside the door, waiting for her charges to choose books.
    The earl waited until Jennifer turned a corner and paused to look at a case of books that conveniently hid her from the front of the library.
    “Ah,” he said softly, stepping up behind her, “a fellow reader.”
    He had startled her. She whirled about to face him so that her back was to the bookcase. He was glad that he had stood so close. Even amidst the semidarkness of the shelves and the dust of books she looked startlingly lovely. He still had not satisfied himself as to the exact color of her eyes. But they were wide and beautiful eyes.
    “Good morning, my lord,” she said. “I am borrowing a book.”
    He smiled and waited until she realized the absurdity of her own words and smiled unwillingly back—he guessed that it was unwillingly. He guessed too that she had been warned against him. She had looked guilty and almost terrified when she first turned. He wondered what they had told her of him. In particular, he wondered what Kersey had told her.
    “So I see.” He took the book that was tucked under her arm and raised his eyebrows. “Pope? You like his poetry?”
    “I do not know,” she said. “But I mean to find out.”
    “You like poetry?” he asked. “You have tried Wordsworth or Coleridge?”
    “Both,” she said. “And I love both. Mr. Pope is quite different, I have heard. Perhaps I will love him just as well. I do not believe that liking one type of literature means that one will not like another type. Do you? It would give one a very narrow scope of interest.”
    “Quite,” he said. “Do you like novels? Richardson, for example?”
    She smiled again. “I liked
Pamela
until I read Mr. Fielding’s
Joseph Andrews,”
she said, “and realized how he had made fun of the other book and how right he was to do so. I was ashamed that I had not seen for myself how hypocritical Pamela was.”
    “But that is one purpose of literature, surely,” he said. “To help us see aspects of our world that we had not thought of for ourselves. To broaden our horizons and our minds. To make us more critical and more liberal in our thinking.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you are right.” And then she blushed and looked around her and licked her lips and he guessed that she had just remembered she was not supposed to be talking with him.
    “I do not attack young ladies in dark corners of libraries,” he said. “But I understand that you must go.”
    “Yes,” she said, looking warily at him. He had not stood back to enable her to pass.
    “You will be at the Chisleys’ ball this evening?” he asked.
    She nodded.
    “You will reserve a set for me?” he asked. “The second, perhaps? Doubtless you will dance the first with your betrothed.”
    “You know?” she