His Mistress by Morning Read Online Free PDF Page A

sense of them.
    Lottie, my love.
    Wake you up properly.
    Oh, now Sebastian!
    Wear blue.
    She heaved a large sigh and looked around the rich room trying to find some clue as to where she was and how she’d arrived in this puzzle.
    For some reason, her gaze fell on the large painting she’d spied earlier, the one of the naked woman reclining on a sofa.
    The familiar-looking lady.
    Charlotte tentatively got down out of the high bed, catching up a blue silk wrapper that lay negligently tossed on the floor. She pulled it on as quickly as possible and did her best to ignore the fact that it fit as if it had been made for her. Then she padded softly and cautiously across the room.
    She stopped before the painting, her eyes lighting on the signature at the bottom.
    E. Arbuckle.
    Ephram Arbuckle? Her eyes swung up to the painting with a newfound awe. Arbuckle was the portrait painter of the ton . It was said that to have Arbuckle paint you was to live immortal, for he captured the very soul of his subjects.
    She looked up at the lady and blushed at the sight of her, so natural and relaxed, her breasts thrust upwards as she reclined, the look on her face so smugly content, as if she’d just been…
    Charlotte turned away, embarrassed to even think such a thing, let alone have a sense of jealousy that this scandalous creature probably wouldn’t have wasted the morning ducking out of Lord Trent’s eager embrace.
    Now, Sebastian. Oh, please now…
    She opened her eyes and found herself staring at a long mirror standing in the corner.
    “No,” she whispered, her eyes widening at the imageof a woman with ruffled hair and sultry eyes staring back at her. “No, it can’t be—”
    She turned around and glanced at the Cyprian in the portrait.
    Then she turned back to the mirror and considered what she had to do. Biting her bottom lip, she took hold of either side of the wrapper she wore and flung it open.
    “Oh, dear heavens.” She glanced over her shoulder and then back at the mirror. The same breasts, same tousled locks, same long limbs.
    She was the woman in the Arbuckle painting.
    Her knees wobbled beneath her and she thought she was going to topple over, that is, until the sound of footfalls in the hallway jolted her out of her shock. Snapping the wrapper closed again, she turned toward the door.
    Her body tensed, not in a frightened way but in a manner she had to imagine her twin in the painting would understand.
    Sebastian…he’s come back.
    The door handle turned and Charlotte held her breath.
    To her disappointment, an older woman bustled in. A wee bit of a thing, she barely came to Charlotte’s shoulder.
    A plain apron covered a dove gray gown, while her white hair seemed to glow above her dull clothes.
    Yet it was her eyes that startled Charlotte—as green as moss and sparkling with a lively light that belied the deep wrinkles in her face or the stoop to her shoulders.
    “Oh, good, you’re up,” she said, as she went about the room picking up discarded clothes and unmentionables, clucking at the general disorder of the place.
    Instead of the usual odors of a charring woman—thoseof hard work and coals and bedpans—this woman smelled of something fresh and clean. As if she’d brought the first flowers of spring into the room with her.
    “Who are you?”
    “Quince,” the maid told her, having picked up a pair of smallclothes that were decidedly masculine.
    Charlotte blushed, for she could well imagine who they belonged to.
    This Quince didn’t seem nonplussed in the least by the sight of them, for she simply tossed them onto the growing pile of laundry.
    “What are you doing here?” Charlotte asked, dodging out of the woman’s path as she bustled around the room, now putting the pots and paints on the dressing table in order.
    Quince turned around and stuck her fists on her hips. “Straightening things out, what else would I be doing this morning?”
    There was a challenge in her eyes that suggested to