The Flighty Fiancee

Published by Evernight Publishing at Smashwords

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2012 Emma Shortt

ISBN:
978-1-77130-040-7

Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor: Caitlin Ray

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or
distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this
book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without
written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and
places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

No matter what
the era
, love
prevails.

Emma Shortt

Copyright © 2012

Chapter One

Lady India Grayson smoothed down her gown with
anxious hands, then wondered if she should have left it alone.
Delicate and prone to wrinkling if handled too roughly, Madam
Rosa’s silk and satin creation demanded gentler care than India was
currently giving it. Already, after the very slightest of pressure,
India could see a crease beginning at her waist and travelling down
her skirt. She bit her lip and considered.

The crease drew attention to her long legs and
curvaceous hips, and would likely garner all sorts of notice. The
matrons would cluck, the other ladies gossip, and the
gentlemen…their eyes would travel over her hungrily, like they
always did, but that would be all. That was all they
ever
did. And the one man whose eyes she wanted? Well, in all
probability he wouldn’t even notice.
Damn him.

India picked up her emerald green evening gloves
from the dressing table and tugged them up her arms—perhaps a
little more forcibly than she should. The fabric prickled against
her skin and despite her bad mood she shivered a little. She seemed
to be shivering often of late, as if her skin had become overly
excitated. Or maybe just angry.

India suspected she knew why.

Bartholomew’s image formed in her head. Exact and
perfect. The dark hair, the aquiline jaw, the little curve to his
lips when he smiled. She scrunched her eyes shut and tried to push
him out, but he refused to be dislodged. Didn’t he always?

She scowled and smoothed the gloves along her arms,
running her fingers all the way up to her shoulders. Her skin
prickled from the contact and the familiar low throbbing began in
her belly. She pulled her hands away and let them drop loosely by
her sides.

“Stop it,” she whispered. “Just stop it.”

Because she knew what the throbbing wanted. She’d
worked it out after a mere day in Bartholomew’s company. And she
knew also, now at least, that she would not be given what she
needed to ease it.

Not from him anyway.

Her fingers curled into fists and she exhaled
shakily, wondering all over again how everything had gone so awry.
After a season that had begun with the prospect of everything she
had ever longed for—the balls, the parties and the attention of a
man she admired above any other—India was now left searching for a
way to resign herself to something she had never wanted. Something
that she had no choice in. Oh the balls continued, the routs and
the gossip—always the gossip. No one could suggest the
ton
was lacking in entertainment. But Bartholomew?

Swallowing back the sudden lump in her throat, India
made to grab her skirts, a habit of hers when feeling vexed, but
remembered just in time. Another crease would definitely invite
censorious glares, and although India didn’t care much for
convention, she had no intention of arriving at the ball looking
unkempt—especially as it wouldn’t make any difference to
him
. Shaking herself instead she took a deep breath and
checked her reflection one last time.

A cool, red haired, green eyed beauty stared back at
her. She sighed, as beautiful as many would not doubt think she
looked, India knew something was missing. That indefinable
something that she’d seen in her friends that had recently been
married, or on the demi-reps she’s spied on her first month in the
capital. The something that would turn her collected poise on its
head, that would fire her eyes and leave her flush faced.

She sighed again and ran her hands along her
belly—where the throbbing continued—before settling on the juncture
between her legs. Layers of fabric stopped her hesitant fingers
finding what they wanted. What they searched for late at night, in
the privacy of her bedchamber. Her frantic explorations becoming
more and more frequent and yet, somehow, leaving her unfulfilled.
And all the while his face in her thoughts….

Pulling her hand away India leaned against the
dresser so that her face was mere inches from the mirror. “Stop
thinking about him,” she hissed. “It makes no difference. You
should have learned that by now.”

“What doesn’t,
naari
?”

The soft tones of her maid and companion, Anjika,
floated across the room from the now open door, and India
straightened, flushing slightly. “Nothing, just remarking to
myself.”

“You are nervous about the ball?” Anjika asked,
closing the door as silently as she’d opened it.

“No, why would I be? I’ve been to countless numbers
of them.” India paused and shook her head, a riot of rooms and
people flittering through her mind, finally dislodging
him
.
“I think the
ton
itself would fall apart without the balls
there to keep them afloat. They’re like the lifeblood of
society.”

Anjika laughed and eyed India’s skirt. “Or maybe
like the structure. Like the ribs of that whale carcass we
saw?”

“Exactly, and the matrons of the
ton
are the
big curved bones arching over everyone, rigid and fixed.”

Anjika narrowed her black eyes and bent to judge the
length of the crease. “England itself is rigid and fixed, you knew
this long ago. Now at tonight’s ball, Lord Bartholomew will be
there will he not?”

India lifted her arms, not fooled by the innocent
tone of her companion’s voice. “Yes he will. He’s always there.
Every ball I go to there he is waiting.”

“As he should be,” Anjika agreed, tugging on the
skirt.

“I….” India paused before shaking her head. “It
doesn’t matter.”

“What,
naari
?” Anjika prompted. “Tell
me.”

“The balls are becoming…tiresome. Each one is the
same as the other.”

“You would like them to be different how?”

“I don’t know. I just want excitement, Anjika,”
India said slowly. “I want something to happen. Something to shake
things up. I want to be lured into compromising situations, tempted
to walk down dark alleys and shaded terraces. I want rakes to stalk
me and intrigue to befall the room. But it never happens. I go, I
dance, I gossip and then I come home.”

“That is not what you want,” Anjika said. “The rakes
and the intrigue. You know it isn’t.”

“It is—”

“No,” Anjika interrupted. “You want what you thought
you were going to have, before you had realized the truth. That is
what you are longing for. That is what is making you anxious and
angry.”

“The truth—”

Anjika nodded, the light of the room dancing off her
perfectly black hair. “Of the situation. Of the reality of marriage
here in this world. It was always going to be hard for you. You
have never been like the other debutantes.”

“Because I’m not one.”

“Exactly. This is why you are finding it hard to
accept your fate. You want the grand passion.”

India scowled. “No. I’ll never want that again,” she
said, her skin prickling all over again, but she suspected the lie
in her voice was obvious. “I know better now than to hope for
something that will never be.”

A final tug on her skirt and Anjika straightened
before sending her a look filled with sympathy and love. A look
that said she knew the truth as well as her employer. “Stop
grabbing the material,
naari
,” she said, leaving the lie
between them. “You will ruin the dress. Now go, your Papa is
waiting.”

India patted her friend’s cheek and picked her
reticule up from the dresser. “I promise to try.”

The grand passion.
Sweeping from the room and
down the winding staircase India played the words over in her head.
They made her feel hot and uncomfortable and she hated herself for
it, more than that though she hated
him
. In an effort to
clear her thoughts she considered the night ahead. She imagined the
food, the dancing and tried to make herself feel excited about
them. When that failed she considered the men who were likely to be
at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. She ticked the names off her
mental tally and frowned as one dreary face after another sped
across her mind. Too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too poor.
No one measured up.

Not against Bartholomew.

She shivered, heat dancing along her spine, the
throb returning, as his face once again teased her thoughts. No one
could suggest Lord Bartholomew was too anything. He met every
requirement a suitor needed. A big estate, an excellent annual
income, a face and form like the hero of a gothic novel—everything
exactly how it should be.

Everything but the passion.

India glared at an ancestor’s portrait, seeing
Bartholomew in the rigid planes of the distant uncle’s face.
Because that was what it all came down to. Where all the tension
and the anger came from.
And the disappointment
, her mind
whispered. It all comes from him. From the reality of the
situation. Because where she was concerned, and despite her best
efforts to make it otherwise, Lord Bartholomew was, and always had
been, a cold fish.

And yet this was the man she was to marry….

Oh she’d tried of course, God knows she had. Batting
her eyes at him, sitting as close as she could, silly excuses to
touch him—all for naught. It had gotten to the point where she’d
seriously considered doing something outrageous, like kissing him
or begging him to do something to make the ache between her legs go
away. After all, they were engaged; he was to be her husband.
Surely he should want to do those things.

Only he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t want you that
way.

And there was the truth. Inescapable and fixed.
Bartholomew didn’t want her like she wanted him. Theirs was to be a
marriage of convenience. If only she’d have known that from the
beginning, before she agreed to his proposal….