Marrying Winterborne (The Ravenels #2) - Lisa Kleypas Page 0,89
but something about her reminded Helen of a starling she’d once seen perched on the hand of an itinerant bird seller. The bird’s wings had been pinned to its sides with fetters and a length of packthread . . . but its eyes had been wild and bright with the longing for freedom.
“Unexpectedly,” Lady Berwick said in a soft undertone, “my husband’s heir has come to meet you. You need say very little to him. Straighten your spine.”
With no more preparation than that, Helen found herself pulled into the receiving room.
“Lady Helen,” the countess said evenly, “this is my nephew, Mr. Vance.”
Chapter 23
HELEN FELT AN ALL-OVER sting, as if she’d been dropped into a flash-fire. Then she couldn’t feel anything at all except the brutal pounding of her heart, like a fist beating against a closed door. She curtsied without lifting her gaze.
“How do you do?” she heard him murmur. A pleasant voice, dry and smooth, not too deep.
Some outside force seemed to be guiding Helen’s actions. She entered the room and went to a chair near the settee, arranging her skirts by force of habit. After Vance had occupied the settee, she brought herself to look at him.
Albion Vance was singularly handsome in a way that made her skin crawl. She had never seen anyone who looked like him, his complexion white and incongruously youthful, his eyes pale gray-blue, his cropped hair snow-colored and gleaming like the inside of an oyster shell. His honed features reminded her of the thin-nosed wax heads in barbershop windows, set out to display the latest hairdressing styles. He was an average-sized man, lean and compactly built, his legs crossed with feline grace.
With an unpleasant shock of recognition, Helen saw that his brows and lashes were dark, just as hers were. Oh, how peculiar this was—she was grateful for the unearthly calm that had settled over her, muffling every sensation.
Vance regarded her with a detached stare. There was something corrupt and magnetic about him, the sense of an icy flame animating a self-interested spirit.
“You remind me of your mother,” he observed. “Although you are more delicate.”
Perfectly aware that she had instantly been assessed and found lacking, Helen asked, “Were you acquainted with her, Mr. Vance? I don’t recall having seen you at Eversby Priory.”
“From time to time I saw her at social events, when she was at town.” He smiled, revealing a perfect row of small white teeth. “A captivating beauty. Childlike in her impetuosity. She loved to dance and couldn’t keep her feet still when music was playing. One time I told her that she reminded me of that charming tale, the one with the red shoes.”
Helen had always hated that story, in which a little girl who had dared to wear red shoes to her confirmation had been doomed to dance in them until she died. “You’re referring to the one by Hans Christian Andersen? It’s a morality tale about the wages of sin, is it not?”
His smile faded, and his gaze returned to hers, now appraising rather than dismissive. “I confess, I don’t recall the moral of the story.”
“No doubt it’s been a long time since you’ve read it.” Helen made her face into the inscrutable mask that had always annoyed the twins and provoked them to call her a sphinx. “The red shoes become instruments of death, after a girl yields to temptation.”
Vance regarded her suspiciously, clearly wondering if that had been a deliberate dig. “I was sorry to learn of your mother’s passing, and more recently, of your father and brother. These have been tragic times for the Ravenels.”
“We hope for better days ahead,” Helen said in a neutral tone.
Vance turned to Lady Berwick with an unsettling, foxlike grin. “The Ravenels seem to be recovering nicely. Our clever Kathleen has certainly wasted no time in snapping up the next Earl of Trenear.”
The countess couldn’t entirely conceal her annoyance at the implication that Kathleen had married Devon out of calculation and opportunism. “It is a love match,” she said shortly.
“So was her first marriage. How convenient for Kathleen that she loves so easily.”
Helen loathed him. There was something polluted about him, something unappeasably cruel. She was appalled that his blood ran through her veins. She remembered what Rhys had said a few nights earlier: Any child of his is demon spawn, and would come to no good. Now having met Vance, she had to agree. How could her mother have fallen under the spell of a man like this? How