The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [2]
Someone patted her bare arm again.
“Sinjun?”
She sighed even as she turned to her sister-in-law Alex. “Yes?”
“Are you all right? You’ve been standing there as still as one of the Northcliffe Greek statues for the longest time. Before, I called to you, but you didn’t seem to even see me.”
“Oh yes, I’m quite all right,” she said, and looked back to where she’d last seen him. Then she heard a man laugh and knew it was his laugh, pure and resonant. It filled her with warmth and excitement, and made that something deep inside her move again, move powerfully. She felt it to her toes.
No man could be the ideal of perfection that she’d bestowed upon him at first sight. No, it was quite impossible. She wasn’t stupid or naive or a silly little debutante, not with two brothers so flagrantly brazen in their behavior and speech. He was probably a troll, at least on the inside.
“Sinjun, what the devil is wrong with you? Are you sickening with something?”
She drew a deep breath and decided to keep her mouth shut, which was quite unlike her. But this was too new, too uncertain. She grinned hugely. “Alex, I quite like her grace, the Duchess of Portmaine. Brandy is her nickname and she begged me not to call her that horrid name Brandella. Isn’t that exceedingly clever to shorten Brandella in such a manner?” Sinjun leaned down close to her sister-in-law’s ear. “And would you just look at her grace’s bosom—is it possible that she is more impressive than you? Of course, she is a bit older than you, I expect.”
Douglas Sherbrooke, not stifling his laugh, said, “Good Lord, do you think that age is a factor, Sinjun? A lady’s years adding to her endowments? My God, by the time Alex is sixty, she wouldn’t be able to walk upright. But this calls for a closer study of the duchess. On the other hand, I must point out, Sinjun, as your eldest brother, that it is most inappropriate for you to remark upon her grace’s assets and Alex’s lack thereof.”
Sinjun laughed at her brother’s words and the look on his wife’s face as he continued to Alex in a mournful voice, “I had thought you the most nobly endowed lady in all of England. Perhaps it is only in southern England that you hold that distinction. Perhaps it is only within the immediate vicinity of Northcliffe Hall that you lord it over other less worthy bosoms. Perhaps I have been taken in, perhaps I have been duped.”
His fond wife punched his arm. “I suggest that you keep your eyes and thoughts at home, where they belong, my lord, and leave the duchess and her endowments to the duke.”
“Just so,” the earl said, then turned to his sister, who looked suddenly different to his critical and fond eye. She hadn’t looked at all different earlier in the evening, but she did now. She looked abstracted, yes, that was it, which was odd, very odd indeed. Sinjun was usually as clear as a summer pond, her thoughts and feelings clearly writ on her expressive face; but now he didn’t have the slightest idea what was in her mind. It bothered him. It was like a hard kick from a horse he’d just turned his back on. He suddenly felt as if he didn’t know this tall, quite lovely young lady, not at all. He tried for neutrality. “So, brat, are you having a good time? This last cotillion is the only dance you haven’t danced the entire evening.”
“She is nineteen, Douglas,” Alex said. “Surely you must soon stop calling her brat.”
“Even when she continues to play the Virgin Bride to torment my sleep?”
Whilst the two of them argued over the luckless sixteenth-century ghost of Northcliffe Hall, Sinjun had time to think and decide what to say. When they finished, she sidestepped her brother neatly, saying only, “No ghosting about for