Midnight Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page B

endowed Lady Fairvilla. If her name had been announced, he hadn’t caught it.
    Dutifully Connor took her hand, intending to bow over it and drop it as quickly as possible. But something unexpected happened. Her slim fingers felt like ice, but they sparked a strange heat inside him. Puzzled, he raised his eyes, taking in the narrow waist, the elegant carriage, the sweetly rounded shoulders, the swanlike column of her throat. Memories stirred inside him, weaving together into a taut pattern that ached with beauty and with pain. Like a man in a dream he lifted his gaze to her face, knowing even before he saw it that her hair would be the color of sunset and her eyes would be as green as the sea. A softness he hadn’t felt in four years and several lifetimes touched his lips as he said, “Hello, Juliana.”
    Four years had gone by, four years that had changed her from an impressionable girl to a cultured and celebrated woman. And yet, as she watched his mouth curve into a ghost of his laughing smile, and felt his hand possess hers with its strength and surprising gentleness, she felt the years drop away. Once again she was sitting beside him in her father’s moonlit garden, listening to him profess his undying devotion, her heart so full of love for him that it nearly made her weep.
    But his voice shattered the spell. Rough and ragged, it was as far from Connor’s light, breezy lilt as night fromday. Juliana’s spine went stiff as she recalled the rest of her memories, none of them tender in the least. The man was
beyond
redemption. He should have appeared contrite. Or made at least a halfhearted attempt to pretend not to know her. Instead, his pale eyes took in every detail of her form, then met her own with a bold, completely unrepentant familiarity.
    All at once she was glad that Renquist had dragged her here despite her protests. It gave her an opportunity to tell Connor Reed exactly how much she despised him. She squared her shoulders, intending to deliver a set-down so brilliantly stinging that it would be repeated at garden parties for months to come, but Morrow spoke first.
    “Why, do you know our Lady Juliana, Captain Gabriel?”
    Gabriel?
Juliana glanced around, wondering if another naval officer had joined them. But the earl still looked straight at Connor. “But Lord Morrow, his name is not—”
    “Not one the lady expected to hear at tonight’s party,” Connor finished quickly as he stepped between them. “We have known each other for years, but I fear my identity is as much a surprise to her as it is to the rest of you. I can only plead that I was under orders not to tell a soul. Come, forgive an old friend his deception.”
    Connor’s icy eyes were bright with unspoken warning. But if he thought a mere look would silence her, he was very much mistaken. Four years of anger boiled up inside her, four years of buried humiliation.
“Friend?”
she repeated, seething. “How
dare
you? How dare you even speak to me after what you did? I’ll have you in irons—”
    Her words ended in a yelp as Connor tromped on her foot.
    “Heavens, look what I’ve done,” the captain said, though to Juliana’s ears his distress sounded as false as his name. “Lord Morrow, could you fetch a doctor? I fear I might have injured this poor lady.”
    The poor lady feared it as well, but she wasn’t about to let Connor get the upper hand. Balanced on one foot and bitingher lip against the pain, she growled, “Reed, you slimy son of a—”
    “And delirious, too,” Connor interrupted. “She believes I am someone else. Quick, Morrow. Fetch the doctor!”
    The earl scuttled off to find help. Juliana turned to the rest of the crowd, determined to tell
someone
who this man really was, but Connor scooped her up in his arms and carried her behind the curtain. He called over his shoulder to the people who hovered nearby, saying the lady needed some breathing room. Alarmed, Juliana saw the crowd back away before the heavy