Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

meeting in Mayfair, and Pembroke was not in attendance. On any other day there was nothing he liked better than to join his more raucous friends to sample their chosen courtesans away from the prying eyes of the London ton . But after seeing Arabella, he could not face a crowd.
    Tonight the new Duke of Hawthorne was throwing an impromptu fete with the Club, a celebration of his elevation to the dukedom. He would drink and whore and enjoy himself, while rumors circulated throughout London, ruining Arabella’s life.
    Pembroke sat smoking his cheroot, trying without success to calm his temper. The lazy spirals of tobacco smoke circled his head, rising until they dissipated into the darkness. A fire burned in the grate. His favorite brandy sat by his elbow, poured by his butler, Codington, who followed him everywhere, from one house to another, from the country into town.
    Codington had done more to raise Pembroke when he was a child than his father ever had. Only Codington’s firm hand had kept Pembroke in any sort of acquaintance with the straight and narrow; only Codington’s compassion had tempered Pembroke’s fury as a boy. His father had beaten him, and Codington had dressed the wounds. Until the summer Pembroke turned eighteen, when he had run away to join the army.
    Pembroke could not think of that summer. He thought of that summer only when drink no longer blunted his wits, when the women no longer distracted him. As the ormolu clock on the mantel struck two, Pembroke took up his drink and downed it.
    Arabella. He had not seen her in years but remembered the exact color of her ice blue eyes. Those eyes were cold, aloof, as if she had never felt any emotion other than quiet calm. But years ago, Pembroke had held her in his arms. He had kissed her delicate lips until the roses came into her pale cheeks, until those eyes glowed like blue flame, warming him as no other fire ever had, nor ever would again.
    Pembroke cast his empty glass into the hearth where the fine crystal splintered into shards. He sighed and cursed himself. No doubt as soon as he went back to bed, Codington would have a maid down on her knees, cleaning up the mess he had made. One of the realities of being an earl was that other people were obligated to clean up the messes he left behind.
    A scratching at the door made Pembroke jump.
    “There is a lady to see you, my lord,” Codington announced. “She gives the name of the Duchess of Hawthorne.”
    Hope pierced him, and he felt his lust rise out of nowhere, as if her name had conjured it. He told himself not to be a fool, that she had left him without a backward glance and had betrayed him for a duchess’s coronet.
    But he wanted her anyway, in spite of that, because of it. With Arabella in his bed at last, he could finally conquer his demons, his old illusions of her. He could have her and move on.
    Codington bowed, and without another moment passing, she was there, the woman he had spent his adult life running away from, the memory of whom would never leave him, not even ten years later, not even when he slept.
    “Arabella.”
    He had no right to use her given name, but he could not seem to help it.
    “Lord Pembroke. You are kind to receive me without warning, so late at night.”
    She spoke as if he had not seen her that afternoon, as if he had not propositioned her in her own sitting room. Her voice was still like honey, its sweetness rich and resonant, the one thing about her that had not changed.
    She was smaller than he remembered. In spite of the layers of silk and black bombazine, she looked as if she might blow away with the next strong wind. Her face was covered by the thick crepe of her mourning veil.
    Codington withdrew, closing the door to the library with an emphatic click. Pembroke would have smiled at his butler’s censure, but he could not look away from Arabella.
    He wanted her, and now she had come. His heart began to race, his breath to come short. He felt suddenly like a