Free The Pleasure Trap by Elizabeth Thornton Page A

wasn’t quite sure that the three ladies who had taken on the task had the least idea of what willful young debutantes could get up to.
    “I remember my first Season,” said the dowager. She got up, wandered over to the table where the fans were laid out, and examined each one closely. Ash, meantime, picked up a leather-bound volume that was lying on the table at his elbow. It wasn’t a novel, as he expected, but a notebook. He idly riffled through it. Someone had been making copious notes on the layout of the rooms, the gardens, the duties of servants, and the modes of address for those with titles. He turned back to the first page. It was inscribed
Eve Dearing.
He put the notebook down before Eve was aware of what he was up to.
    His grandmother had a fan in her hand, a painted ivory silk that was decorated with mother-of-pearl and white feathers. She gazed at it fondly. “I had a fan like this once,” she said. “It was a wedding present from my husband. If you look closely, you’ll see the bride and groom and their attendants outside the church. These days, young girls use their fans to cool their cheeks. When I was a girl—” She gave a faint laugh. “When I was a girl, we used our fans to flirt with our beaux.”
    “Flirt with your beaux?” said Amanda. “With a fan?”
    Lady Sayers interjected, “Go on, Augusta. Show these young things how it’s done.”
    The dowager did not need a second bidding. She flicked the fan open with her right hand and covered her face so that only her eyes were showing. “That means ‘Follow me,’” she said. In the next instant, she changed the fan to her left hand and twirled it as though she was not aware of what she was doing. “And that means, ‘Careful, we are being watched.’ There is no end to the messages a girl can convey to her lover when she has a fan in her hand, but the one that is indispensable is this.” She snapped the fan shut and tapped it against her left cheek. “That means ‘No.’”
    There was a titter of laughter.
    “What if the lady wants to say ‘Yes’?” asked Lydia Rivers with a sideways glance at Ash.
    “Oh, I think you girls can work that out for yourselves,” the dowager replied.
    “Shocking!” declared Amanda, and everyone laughed.
    Lady Sayers let out a sigh. “I remember it all as though it were yesterday. The beauty patches we wore, the bonnets, the gentlemen so handsome in their powdered wigs and skintight breeches…”
    “And those gowns with their impossible panniers to navigate through doors,” reminisced the dowager in a faraway voice.
    “Panniers?” Lady Sayers sat up straighter. “That was before my time, Augusta. My gowns had hoops but not those grotesque panniers my mother wore.”
    “Of course. Now I remember, Sally. You were just a babe in arms at my wedding.”
    The silence was very mellow. Ash hated to break it, but he had come with a purpose and that was to settle, once and for all, whether one of these writers could possibly be Angelo.
    To Eve, he said, “Lady Sayers mentioned that you were setting your next book in town at the height of the Season.”
    Eve’s eyes, still mellow from hearing his grandmother’s musings, met his in an unguarded stare. “Yes. The idea has been floating around in my mind for some time.”
    The refreshments arrived at that moment, and Mrs. Rivers got up to help their hostess pass out cups of tea. She served Ash last and managed to brush her fingers against his. He gave no sign that he was aware of it.
    Ash went on, “That’s quite a departure for you, is it not? You usually set your stories in stately homes and landscaped gardens.”
    Eve stirred her tea. “I suppose I wanted to try something new. I hope I haven’t taken on too much. I lead a rather quiet life in Henley.” She smiled faintly. “Country ways are not the same as town ways. There is no such thing as a Season. We have assemblies from time to time and that’s about all, except for meeting friends,