Until You

Julia

"I'd enjoy the company," Sheridan said truthfully, and then because she couldn't choke back the words, she added, "Is the Earl of Langford here?"

"No, but he's expected momentarily, and Mama is up in the boughs with ridiculous notions about making a match between us. I don't know how I'll endure this weekend." Anger flared in her eyes. "Why does she do this to me, Miss Bromleigh? Tell me why her greatest desire in life is to foist me off on the richest man with the biggest title, no matter how old or how ugly or how unpalatable I might find him! Tell me why she behaves like such a-a toadeater when she's among anyone she regards as her social superior!" Sheridan's heart went out to her as she watched the seventeen-year-old struggle to keep her shame and anger under control. "You should have seen her in the drawing room a while ago with the Duchess of Claymore and her friends. Mama was so-so pushing-and so eager to win their favor that it was horrid to watch."

Sheridan couldn't answer any of those questions without betraying her secret revulsion at the same attitudes Julia

Scornfully, Julia

"A beautiful princess?" Sheridan provided, and it was partially true. In Lady Skeffington's mind, Julia

"I wish I were ugly!" Julia

Sheridan felt absolutely called upon to at least show she understood. "Then your reputation might suffer," she provided, "and you would be-"

"Ruined!" exclaimed Julia

In Julia

"Miss Bromleigh, do you believe in love? I mean, love between a man and a woman, of the sort one reads about in novels? I don't."

"I-" Sheridan hesitated, remembering the exhilaration she'd felt when Stephen walked into a room, the delight that came from talking with him or laughing with him. And she remembered most of all the odd sense of rightness she'd experienced when she believed he derived intense pleasure from kissing her. For a while, she had felt as if she were playing her part in the natural order of things. She had felt… complete… because she pleased him. Or because she stupidly thought she pleased him. Realizing that Julia

"And?"

"And it can be very painful when it is one-sided," she confessed and then was astonished her guard had dropped so far, merely by allowing herself to think of a kiss.

"I see," Julia

"I don't think you do," Sheridan lied with a bright smile.

Julia

It was on the tip of Sheridan's tongue to sternly point out the wrongness of prying into another person's life, but Julia

"How do you manage to seem so serene?"

Sheridan felt anything but serene at the moment, and she attempted a joke, but her laugh was strained. "I'm a paragon, obviously. Courageous-determined. Now, talk to me about more important things. What are the plans for the weekend, do you know?"

Julia

Instead of being stricken, Sheridan was slowly standing up, propelled to her feet by a boiling wrath beyond anything she'd ever known. Based on what Julia

Julia

"Not those monsters," Sheridan said unthinkingly. "The adult monsters! Did you say they were in the drawing room earlier?"

Oblivious to Julia