Rexanne Becnel by The Troublemaker Page A

continued to honor her dance obligations, she watched surreptitiously as he was introduced around by Mr. Liston. Even Estelle Kendrick was introduced to him, and Sarah had to bite her tongue when she saw his gaze lower to that monstrous mound of pale flesh the woman practically thrust in his face. Her stomach clenched violently at the unwelcome image of him falling face first into that deep cleavage and never coming up again.
    “I…I believe I need some air,” she murmured to her partner of the moment. “If you will excuse me?”
    But a quarter hour in the window of the second-floor ladies’ resting room did nothing at all to calm Sarah’s nerves. Indeed, when she spied a group of boys in the side yard sneaking drinks, then pushing and shoving and laughing too loud, she felt decidedly worse. Adrian was not there among the fellows of his own age, nor was he mingling with the adults downstairs.
    The poor boy. He fit in nowhere, she realized. No father, and a slattern for a mother. No wonder he’d fled Eton. He did not fit there either. He might be educated as a gentleman, but he had not yet learned how to escape his less-than-sterling heritage. More than ever she vowed to befriend him. But first she had to find him.
    So, with a resolute sigh, she rose from the window seat, smoothed her skirts, then for good measure tugged the seed-pearl-embroidered neckline of her gown as low as it would go. The fact that the dressmaker’s mirror in the corner revealed no cleavage at all—not even a little shadow of one—only depressed her further.
    Why should she care that her bosom was perfectly ordinary when compared to that woman’s? Adrian was her project, not Marshall MacDougal or any other man here tonight. As far as she cared, they could all smother in Estelle’s overabundant flesh. In fact, she hoped they did.
    Marsh spied Sarah the moment she descended the stairway. He’d come to the mayor’s soiree because of the opportunity it gave him to meet a large number of people. But he’d known he would probably have to face Sarah Palmer, and so he’d procrastinated until he could procrastinate no longer. He’d braced himself for revulsion when he saw her, determined to bury any stray remnant of attraction that might still linger. As much as the idea repulsed him, it seemed she was his sister—his half-sister—sired of the same father as himself. To even recall their kiss sent a sick shiver through him.
    Yet for the first few seconds after he saw her, he forgot their unsavory relationship. For the first few seconds he simply stared at her, struck by this third facet of her persona. The arrogant scarlet-caped beauty of the carriage; the earthy equestrian alongside the river; and now this vision of innocent perfection.
    Mayor Dinkerson, who’d taken over Mr. Liston’s task of introducing Marsh around, nudged him in the side. “I suppose you’ll be wanting an introduction to her as well?”
    Marsh saw the twinkle in the man’s eye just in time to prevent himself from making an unwise reply. He cleared his throat. “We’ve…ah, we’ve already met. The vicar,” he added, when the man seemed to expect more details.
    “Aha. You couldn’t know this, of course, but Miss Palmer is the very image of her mother, though her hair is darker. But the eyes, the smile, and the bearing…” The man gazed up at Sarah, smiling. “Yes, that Augusta was quite a beauty.”
    Augusta. The mother. The one who’d stolen Cameron Byrde from Marsh’s sweet, trusting mother. In that moment Sarah’s beauty became distasteful in Marsh’s eye, the false beauty of the devil, ugly on the inside, where it counted.
    Unfortunately, the mayor had met Sarah at the bottom of the stairs and now was leading her back to join their group.
    Marsh reacted without thinking, almost as if in a panic. He spun abruptly on his heel and headed toward the first familiar face he spied, that of Mr. Halbrecht, the innkeeper, as it happened, who gestured to him with