Midnight Mistress Read Online Free PDF

him now, or ever. He … broke my father’s heart.”
    “Your
father’s
heart,” Meg repeated slowly. Pushing her spectacles up on her nose, she gave her friend a thoughtful look. “Of course we shall leave if you wish it. In truth, I am not so keen to meet this Archangel now that I know he is so thick with the likes of Morrow.”
    Juliana was having some difficulty pairing the two as well. The Connor she knew would sooner have embraced a bushel of week-old cod than a pompous dandy like the earl. But then, the Connor she knew would never have stolen money from her father, or pledged his heart to her while keeping a mistress on the side.
    She shook the memory aside. “We will ask one of the servants to find Jolly for us. I’ll say I have a sick headache—Lady Woolrich used the same excuse last week at Vauxhall and everyone thought it was quite the thing. We’ll be out of here before anyone discovers we have lef—”
    “Lady Juliana, suwrly you are not leaving!”
    Renquist
. Juliana stiffened, but continued walking. “Alas, I fear I have come down with a bit of a headache. Miss Evans was kind enough to offer to accompany me home.”
    Lord Renquist glanced at Meg as if she were a fly that had landed in his custard. His gaze returned to Juliana, taking on its veneer of adoration. “But my deaw, this is the event of the Season. You will never fowgive yourself if you leave before meeting the Archangel. And I shall never fowgive myself if I let you.”
    And with that he gripped her arm in a surprisingly firm hold and steered Juliana back toward the crowd.

    The admiral is going to pay for this
, Connor thought as he shook the hand of yet another simpering lord. Slack-jawed lobcocks, every one of them. And all gaping at him as if he was a puritan at a prizefight. God’s teeth, he’d rather face a ship with full cannons than this rum-togged bunch. But everything depended on his being in this place, on this night, at this moment.
    “Allow me to introduce the duke of Peasford,” Lord Morrow announced at his side, giving him a smile that managed to be both obsequious and patronizing at once.
    Connor did not return Morrow’s smile. There were some things he wouldn’t do, not even for the admiral. He shook Peasford’s well-manicured hand and wondered if his aristocratic admirers would be so eager to meet him if they’d known he’d grown up fighting wharf rats for scraps of meat. Probably add to his carnival attraction, he thought grimly.
    For an instant he recalled the shame he’d once felt at their genteel and refined rejection. But the once-unbearable pain meant nothing to him now, a tiny pinprick lost among so many newer, deeper and far crueler wounds.
    “Baroness Fairvilla,” Morrow intoned.
    The baroness pressed closer than convention demanded, giving Connor an ample view of her stunningly displayed bosom while she breathlessly described her adoration. Connor’s heavy mood lightened considerably. A gentleman might have looked away discreetly, but Connor was no gentleman. And, from the low-cut gown and the wordless but unmistakable invitation in the woman’s eyes, he suspected that the baroness was no lady.
    On another night he might have acted on the tempting overture. But tonight he was playing a game, far deeper than any of the powdered and patched swells imagined. For four years he’d been through every kind of risk and danger, but he’d never stood closer to the gallows’ noose than he did atthat moment. He looked out over the assembly.
Raoul should have finished by now. Where the hell is he
?
    “Lord Renquist.”
    Still searching the ballroom, Connor barely glanced at the lord who stood before him. He was vaguely aware of the man’s tedious, lisping speech and didn’t even realize he was being introduced to the lord’s companion until she was shoved in front of him. His attention elsewhere, he noted only that she was too tall and too thin, or at least she seemed so after the substantially