Midnight Pleasures Read Online Free PDF Page A

tall man with shoulders so broad that he looked only marginally comfortable in fine broadcloth. She was looking for tousled black hair shot with silver. She hadn’t seen Patrick since she’d turned down his proposal of marriage, and she didn’t see him now.
    Her mother turned about in irritation at the bottom of the stairs.
    “Sophie!” she hissed.
    When Sophie obediently traipsed down the remaining steps, Eloise grasped her wrist in a steely hand.
    “Stop making an exhibition of yourself!”
    The gentlemen were on them now, flocking around Sophie, begging her for dances, handing her dance-cards, looking at her imploringly. Eloise contented herself with giving Sophie an admonishing look before heading off to the chaperones’ corner, where only those women whose titles equaled their ferocity were allowed to sit.
    Laughingly, Sophie divided her time among the beseeching gentlemen, but the exercise was hollow. Tomorrow, or at most in two days, The Times would carry a discreet announcement:
The Earl of Slaslow announces that he will marry Lady Sophie York, the daughter of the Marquis of Brandenburg. The ceremony will be held at St. George’s Church and the formal presentation will occur at a Chapter of the Garter held in St. James’s Palace .
    Then the chattering flocks would fall to the side and all of London would know that the great heiress, Sophie York, had finally settled on a husband. By February she would be married to Braddon Chatwin, the “Amiable Earl,” she’d heard him called. Braddon was amiable. He would be a pleasant husband. He probably liked his horses more than any human being, but he didn’t gamble to excess at the races.
    And he looked capable of mild affection, which was exactly the same emotion that Sophie felt she would bring to the match. They would have beautiful children (an important point), and Braddon would keep his mistresses unobtrusively in the background. It was too slighting to call him dependable, Sophie thought, as she swung into the first dance of the evening. Braddon was kind and without great sins, as far as she could tell. They would likely be happy together.
    The evening wound on, and neither her betrothed nor anyone else important appeared at her side. Sophie danced with elegance and exquisite grace; only the most perceptive noticed that her contagious sense of humor was blunted, if not missing, tonight. A young beau found that his chattering pronouncement of love was greeted with a rather cool rebuff, rather than her usual kind response.
    Sophie felt as if she were walking a tightrope, suspended over a dizzying audience of young men whose silly comments and sweaty palms made her task harder. She stopped looking for silver-shot hair. What was the point? She was to be a countess, not Patrick Foakes’s wife, she thought drearily.
    She went to supper on the arm of the hostess’s son, Peter Dewland. Peter was a sweet-eyed, elegant gentleman whom Sophie had known for years. He was a restful companion, given that he showed no sign of expecting London’s reigning beauty to fall into his arms. In fact, Sophie thought approvingly, Peter had never courted her in any fashion.
    “How is your brother?” Sophie asked. Peter’s elder brother had been cruelly injured in a riding accident and more or less confined to his bed for the past three years.
    “He’s doing much better.” Peter beamed. “He’s been taking a course of treatment from the German doctor who has been at court in the last few months. Have you heard of him? The doctor’s name is Trankelstein. I thought it was all a bag of moonshine, myself, but Trankelstein’s massages actually seem to be working. Quill—that’s what we call Erskine within the family—is able to leave his bedchamber now, and the pain is diminished. In fact, he spends almost every day in the garden, says he doesn’t want to be inside ever again.”
    Sophie truly smiled for the first time that evening, her face lighting up. “Oh, Peter,” she