Free Fortune's Lady by Evelyn Richardson

grasped the hands that were clenching and unclenching at her sides and pulled her toward him. “I have pitted my wits against yours enough to know that you can risk everything without blinking an eye. If you are as agitated as this, something is seriously wrong.”
    “No. I am just being foolish. That is all. It is simply fatigue.”
    “Nonsense.”
    The gray eyes bored into her as though looking into the innermost depths of her soul. It was useless to prevaricate. “I ... It is nothing. I mean, it is quite absurd, really. I just feel as though I am constantly on display like some trinket in a shop, an object in a museum, a picture at an exhibition.”
    “And you are. But is not that the sum total of what all young ladies aspire to? Especially if they are being displayed in such exclusive circles and to such acclaim?”
    “I loathe it.”
    She spoke so softly that he had to bend his head to catch her words, and even then he was not entirely certain that he had heard correctly. “But why? You are the incomparable of incomparables, the envy of every woman in the ton, young or old.”
    “But it is not I they are seeing when they stare at me. I see them, everyone, dissecting every detail of my appearance. The woman are looking for every flaw, the men ...” She shuddered, and the tears that had been threatening to flow now spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “I am utterly alone, isolated by being on display, and I feel like a freak in a traveling show. It is not necessarily that I dislike being alone or that I long for friends, but these people do not care who I am. They are judging me on my appearance alone, not my character. And it is an appearance I have very little to do with. I was born looking as I do. I see the envy in their eyes, the greed. I feel as though I am being poked and prodded and examined like some piece of livestock at a fair. I have no protection from it. I cannot escape it.” She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.
    “My poor girl.” Aching for the anguish he read in her eyes and heard in her voice, Gareth pulled her close, gently stroking the dark hair until the violent trembling that overcame her ceased.
    He had never stopped to think about the ton in such terms, at least where women were concerned. He had simply assumed that all women were like his mother, that they flourished on public display and admiration. But the more he considered it, the more he supposed that it was logical to assume that if he despised being the object of marriage-mad misses’ schemes, then a young woman might very well feel the same way he did, especially a young woman of the sort that Lady Althea Beauchamp was proving to be.
    Althea raised her head and shook it ruefully. “I do beg your pardon. I do not know what came over me. I assure you that I am not usually such a watering pot. But I have been squeezed and ogled to such a degree tonight that I was frantic to get away.”
     

Chapter 9
     
    Gareth stared down into the dark blue eyes swimming in the tears that continued to well up. The tears clinging to her long dark lashes glittered like diamonds in the faint light cast from the ballroom’s enormous chandeliers. He had the maddest impulse to kiss her drooping lips into a smile. His heart went out to her, yet he was utterly powerless to change the situation, to save her from the time-honored rituals of the ton. “I wish there were something I could do to help you,” his heart volunteered before his mind could react.
    Althea tilted her head to stare gravely up at him. “Actually, there is something you could do for me.”
    The stab of disappointment was so strong that it physically hurt him. So she was no better than the others after all, just more clever. She too was trying to trap him into doing something for her, only she was doing it with a great deal more subtlety and strategy than the others— like the master card player she was.
    “You must tell me what it is.”
    Althea frowned