The Viscount and the Virgin - By Annie Burrows Page 0,1
enviously, fell decoratively around her face, not into her eyes. If only her aunt would permit her to just keep her hair long and braid it as she had done before! But no. Fashionable young ladies had their hair cut short at the front. And so poor Pansy had to wield the curling tongs, tie in the bandeaus and jab in the pins.
Which reminded her: that torn flounce still needed pinning up.
‘I look perfectly frightful in my court dress,’ admitted Imogen with a wry smile. ‘Now, if you will excuse me…’ And she began once more to press towards the exit.
The other girls fell into step beside her, Charlotte linking her arm, which obliged her to match their languid pace.
‘Just wait until you try walking back wards with that train!’ chortled Charlotte. Penelope uttered a tinkling little laugh, shaking her head at the impossibility of Imogen per forming such a feat.
‘Oh, I am sure you will manage it, given time and plenty of practice,’ put in Lady Verity kindly.
Penelope made a noise which expressed her extreme doubt. They all knew Imogen could not survive half an hour in a ballroom without tearing her gown. How on earth was she going to cope with all the rig ma role of a court presentation? Sidling through doorways with panniers strapped to her hips, backing away from the royal presence with yards and yards of lace train just waiting to trip her up?
Imogen was still managing to hang onto her compo sure, when Penelope brought up the subject of her head dress.
‘Have you practised getting into a carriage yet?’ she asked, all feigned solicitude. ‘I presume you have bought your feathers. Or at least—’ she paused, laying a hand on her arm, obliging Imogen to come to a complete stand still ‘—you do know how tall they usually are?’
And that had been the moment when disaster struck. Irritated by Penelope’s patronizing attitude, Imogen had swung round, replying, ‘Of course I do!’
Charlotte had let go of her arm, and naturally, Imogen had taken the opportunity to demonstrate exactly how tall those infernal plumes were.
‘They are this high!’ she said, waving her free arm in a wide arc above her head.
And her hand had connected with some thing solid. A man’s voice had uttered a word she was certain she was not supposed to have under stood. She had whirled round, and been horrified to discover that the solid object which her hand had struck had been a glass of champagne, held in the hand of a man just emerging from the refreshment room. All the champagne had sprayed out of the glass, and was now dripping down the front of an intricately tied cravat, onto a beautifully embroidered, green silk waist coat.
‘Oh! I am so sorry!’ she had wailed, delving into her reticule for a handkerchief. ‘I have ruined your waistcoat!’ It really was a shame. That waist coat was very nearly a work of art. Even the stitching around the button holes had been contrived so that the buttons resembled jewelled fruit peeping out from lush foliage.
She pulled out a square of plain muslin—highly absorbent and just the ticket for blotting up the worst of the spill. So long as not too much soaked into the gorgeous silk, his valet would be bound to know of some remedy to rescue it. Why, Pansy could make the most obdurate stains disappear from even the most delicate of fabrics!
But her hand never reached its intended target. The gentleman in the green waist coat grabbed her wrist and snarled, ‘Do not presume to touch my person.’
Stunned by the venomous tone of his voice, she looked up, to en counter a glare from a pair of eyes as green as the jewels adorning his waist coat. And just—she swallowed—as hard.
It was only the hardness of those eyes, and perhaps the cleft in his chin, that pre vented her from immediately applying the word beautiful to the angry gentleman. She took in the regular, finely chiselled features of his face, the fair hair cut in the rather severe style known as the Brutus, the perfect fit of his bottle-green tailcoat, and the immaculately manicured nails of the hand that held her wrist in a bruisingly firm grip. And all the breath left her lungs in one long, shuddering sigh. She had heard people say that some thing had taken their breath away, but this was the first time it had ever happened to her.