Free The Summer Bride (A Chance Sisters Romance) by Anne Gracíe Page B

ever—ever!—be forced into marriage with a stranger for the sake of her father’s debts.
    He loosened his grip deliberately. There was no question of Lady Elizabeth being
forced
. He’d make sure of that. She might have limited choices, but there
were
choices.
    She was stiff and awkward, but she didn’t know him very well yet. She’d no doubt warm up a bit as she came to know him better. She might be thinking of duty, but Flynn could show her that duty could also be a pleasure.
    If she ever gave him the chance.
    He handed over the phaeton and horses to the care of the grooms and hurried off to Berkeley Square. Quarter to four. Almost time for his so-called lesson.



Chapter Five
    To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
    —JANE AUSTEN, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
    A t five minutes to four, Featherby knocked on the door of Daisy’s workroom. “Miss Daisy, it’s almost time for Lady Beatrice’s lesson.”
    Daisy scowled, but put the sleeve she’d been sewing aside. “I’ll go, and I’ll watch, but I ain’t going to bloomin’ well dance.”
    Featherby said nothing. He just held the door open for her, his expression bland.
    Daisy picked up a dress that had the hem pinned, but wasn’t yet sewn. Featherby eyed it but said nothing. He had a way of making things happen, just by . . . expecting.
    She said, as if he’d argued, “I hate dancing. I’m no good at it.”
    She stomped her way up to the room that had been cleared for their lessons, entered and stopped dead. The carpet had been rolled back and all excess furniture had been removed, leaving only the piano and a few chairs arranged along one wall, but that wasn’t what startled her.
    As well as Lady Beatrice, Jane, Abby and Damaris, the elderly Frenchman Monsieur Lefarge who taught the variousdance steps, and his cousin, Madame Bertrand, who played the piano, there were four gentlemen—a stranger, Max, Freddy and Mr. Flynn. Four.
    “What the—?”
    “The gels need more practice with actual gentlemen,” Lady Beatrice declared. “So Monsieur Lefarge has brought another of his cousins to dance with Jane, and I invited dear Max and Freddy. And of course, Mr. Flynn is in need of lessons himself, having been at sea all his life.”
    “Not exactly,” Flynn began. “And I did say I knew—”
    But the old lady took no notice. “Abby and Damaris will dance with their husbands, unfashionable as it is, and Jane will dance with—”
    “Flynn,” said Daisy, seating herself and her sewing by the window.
    “Nonsense! Jane is attending balls with the eyes of the world upon her. She needs further practice with someone who knows what he’s doing. Monsieur Lefarge’s cousin is an expert, Mr. Flynn is a rank beginner.”
    “I’m not, as a matter of—” Flynn began.
    Lady Beatrice raised her lorgnette and eyed him with a beady expression. “I’m sure you perform the hornpipe delightfully, Mr. Flynn—and you must show us some day—but not today.”
    Max and Freddy stifled chuckles, not very successfully. Lady Beatrice gave them the kind of withering look that reduced grown men to schoolboy status. She continued, “Jane needs an expert to refine her steps, so she will dance with Monsieur Lefarge’s cousin and Daisy, you will dance with Mr. Flynn.”
    Daisy looked up from her sewing “Who, me? But—”
    “But what?” Lady Beatrice intoned. “Is this not a dance lesson? Did you not come of your own free will?” The old lady leveled her lorgnette at Daisy.
    Featherby, who had been hovering, gave Daisy a Meaningful Look.
    Daisy glowered. They were all ganging up on her. She looked at Flynn, who was wholly engaged in picking a pieceof fluff off his coat sleeve. An invisible piece of fluff, the cowardly big rat.
    “It’ll be fun, Daisy,” Jane said in a coaxing voice.
    “You might find you enjoy it,” Damaris added sympathetically.
    Betrayed on all sides. Daisy looked at Abby, but Abby said nothing. She knew how Daisy felt