Free The Indian Maiden by Edith Layton Page B

to be when they’d first met: a lovely, lifeless, and passionless creature. So she always seemed in the company of her parents; it was as though they leached the life from her.
    Yet, Faith remembered, in the company of her own parents she too was transformed. But that pair usually made her into a wild and volatile thing, which was why she’d gone to live with her grandfather all those years ago. Perhaps it was better to rage than buckle, Faith thought, looking at the vapid creature so unrecognizable from the spirited girl she had giggled with last night. Although thinking of herself and of how she sat in a room three thousand miles from home, against her will, even though she did it through love, not blind obedience, Faith couldn’t feel she exemplified the virtues of any sort of behavior right now.
    “A brief rebellion, quickly doused. Be thankful, Miss Hamilton, that Lady Mary was not one of your forebears, or we’d still be countrymen right now,” the earl commented as Faith rose to go for the required stroll. It was at such moments, when she felt sympathy for one of his victims, that Faith felt least in charity with her companion. But if he noticed her lack of response to his sally he didn’t mention it, and that was one of the other things Faith liked about him—he demanded very little from her.
    Though Lady Mary had capitulated instantly, there was nevertheless a good deal of muted mumbling as the various other guests arose and prepared to go for the stroll that no one save the duchess, who didn’t have to go at all, had desired. And even that lady gave her daughter an ill - favored glance for her abortive attempt at disobedience. So it was an out-of-sorts, disappointed, and rebellious group that turned, as one, when the butler entered the salon they were just about to vacate, to announce a visitor.
    And he, standing just behind the servant, had a moment of sudden, irrational discomfort, seeing the mass of ill - tempered people looking up glumly at his arrival. But even as the butler pronounced, “Lord Deal to see you, Madame,” the faces brightened, shoulders were thrust back, and smiles appeared. The gentleman could be forgiven if he’d been puffed up at this miraculous transformation at his entrance, but there was no need of such charity, he’d long since learned to ignore the reactions of this set of persons.
    “Your grace,” he said at once, coming into the room and taking the duchess’s plump, beringed hand in his, “your pardon if I interrupt something.”
    He waited only long enough for the sound of her disclaimers to die away before he said, with a shake of his tousled head, “I am a gudgeon, my dear lady. You kindly sent me an invitation for the festivities tonight, and like a chucklehead, I sent back my regrets.” He hadn’t needed to check this detail with his secretary. It was a thing done as matter of course, since that worthy young chap had seen the invitation in the trash with others of the sort where they always were deposited by his employer immediately after being delivered, and he’d fished them out and written polite regrets, as he always did whenever he discovered them crumpled there.
    “But I was too hasty, and have come to tell you that the urgent affairs which required my presence tonight happily have already been taken care of. Is it possible, my dear duchess, that I am still welcome?”
    It took several minutes for the duchess to finish telling Lord Deal the many ways in which it was not only possible, but desirable and vital to the course of all her future happiness in life that he come this evening to her little soiree. Lord Deal might be a recluse, he might have a decidedly odd reputation, but he was a nobleman, he was a neighbor with a matching estate, he had more funds than she could count, and he was notoriously single. And even though he had all these virtues, she and the duke had never considered him as a possible match for their daughter. Because never in a