It Happened One Midnight (PG8) Read Online Free PDF

best, he thinks I’m a feckless child.
    And for a moment he sat feeling strangely hollow, as if someone had just taken a spoon and scooped him out like a melon.
    How little he knows of happiness, despite Miles. Despite Violet. Despite Lyon. He still thinks he can manufacture happiness. His own, that was. From the lives of his children. As far as Isaiah was concerned, there really was very little difference between control and happiness.
    “The end of the year is . . . six months away.”
    “Excellent arithmetic, son,” Isaiah said dryly. “Surely you can manage to reach an agreement with a young woman of good family and fortune. You’ve a certain amount to recommend you—your family name and money, breeding, your good looks. Dozens of lovely girls come eligible every day. We can cement an alliance with an excellent family. There’s Lady Grace Worthington, for instance. And surely marrying a beautiful girl will be no hardship.”
    A certain amount?
    I’ve a “certain amount” to recommend me?
    And really, if this was happening to someone else, it might be terribly funny. But as Jonathan heard his alleged assets inventoried by his father, he felt himself nearly lift out of his body, and he observed the proceedings as if he floated overhead. He was a name and a face, was he? He was a youngest son, and a place would need to be found for him, as if he was a . . . superfluous vase. And this was all he had to offer the world?
    Ah, but damn Lyon and Miles, both of whom had escaped Isaiah Redmond’s iron grasp. Not without cost, of course. Lyon, the golden child, the heir, handsome, popular, charismatic, brilliant, the basket into which his father had put all of his proverbial eggs, had vanished entirely. Miles was still struggling to find enough funders for his next expedition, for his father had refused to assist him in light of his inappropriate marriage. And of course, he was still not precisely warmly received by his father, given that he’d married Cynthia Brightly, who was not received in their home.
    He’d been unable to punish them, or not as thoroughly as he would have liked, so Isaiah clearly intended to leave nothing to chance where it came to Jonathan.
    And this, he realized, was what this conversation was truly about.
    “I feel obliged to point out that I haven’t yet disappeared, Father. Surely that fact numbers among my virtues, too.”
    Isaiah lifted his head. He pinned him with a quelling stare.
    Clearly he wasn’t at all amused. The “yet” in particular did Jonathan no favors.
    But, God, it had been tremendously satisfying to say it. Because if his father possessed any vulnerability at all, it had to do with Lyon. His Achilles’ heel.
    Jonathan met his father’s gaze evenly.
    Blink, you bastard, he willed him.
    “I feel certain you’ll do your duty, Jonathan.”
    He said it almost gently. But under the circumstances Jonathan thought he’d possibly never heard more contemptuous words.
    He really thinks I will do precisely what he says, he thought.
    Good God. He doesn’t know me at all .
    How crushing.
    How illuminating.
    How . . . potentially very useful.
    “Brandy, son?’
    And Jonathan thought with dark amusement that his father had anticipated he’d need a drink at this point in the conversation. Always the strategist, Isaiah Redmond.
    “No, thank you, Father. I best be off to compile a list of potential brides. Six months passes quickly, you know.”
    He departed with an exaggerated wink. Winks— just the sort of thing his father loathed.

Chapter 4

    T OMMY WAS IN JUST a little over her head.
    This realization solidified the moment she found another message slipped under her door. To anyone else the message might have looked like a bit of detritus carried in from the street on someone’s shoe. She knew better.
    She hesitated. Then she plucked it up gingerly between her fingers, and carried it to her table. Nonchalantly she lit a lamp, allowed it to flare into life and set her