Come Midnight Read Free Page B

reaction he anticipated, and wasn't disappointed: Revulsion filled her face.
    Adam made a sound of disgust and released her. The eyes that met hers were hard. Blue-white diamonds in a lace that had been called indecently handsome despite the saber scar. "Did it never occur to you, Lucinda," he asked in a voice that held weary resignation, "there might be a reason I seek other beds? Fact is, my less-than-dear wife, a man courts frostbite in yours."
    "Oh, very good, m'lord—place all the blame on me! Truly, I know better."
    Lucinda stalked to the door connecting their chambers. Reaching it, she whirled to face him. "Everyone in England knows you for a rake, Adam Lightfoot. It's said you run through women as readily as Brummel changes his linens. Well, let me tell you something, m'lord Rut! You can bury me in the country, but you can't still my tongue. With every mile that takes me from London, I'll curse you with it, d'you hear? You'll rue lie day you did this to me—I swear it!"
    As she slammed the door behind her, Adam considered what she'd said. It was true, of course. He'd lost count of the mistresses he'd kept since he inherited at seventeen. Yet he honestly hadn't expected those appetites to extend into his maturity. Tucked in the back of his mind was a hazy yearning he vaguely recalled from years ago ... for a wife to love ... adore, even ... a brood of laughing children ....
    Bloody hell, had he ever been that young? That naive? Had he actually expected to find a woman who'd be those things to him? Who'd make him want to retire contentedly to the country estate he now avoided like the plague?
    He'd be thirty-four in July. When had it all gone sour? The war had done its part, of course. He'd seen enough carnage to harden a saint. Yet to be honest, he'd begun to grow world-weary well before he purchased his commission. He'd joined the regiment in '09. The year after he'd married. He'd already begun to grow tired of life. Pity he'd survived to ... .
    His gaze fell upon a framed miniature on his bed stand, throttling the thought. A child's shyly smiling face looked back at him with eyes the exact color of his own. His son ... the one thing in the world he gave a damn about. As long as he had Andrew, he'd something to live for.
    He threw an irritated glance at the connecting door. Lucinda was well aware of his love for the boy. It was what had allowed her to think she could manipulate him with the child. The ploy had nearly worked. If he weren't convinced London was an unsavory place for the lad—
    A self-deprecating snort truncated the thought. At least be honest with yourself, old man! It's unsavory because of the life you lead here. Even now, you await not only your wife's departure, but your son's. So that you'll be free for another night's debauchery!
    Another glance at the miniature had him swearing under his breath. Only this morning Andrew had begged to be allowed to stay. The pleading in the child's eyes said it wasn't merely because his mother had put him up to it. Yet Adam had steadfastly refused him, though he'd longed to give in. The hardest part had been his inability to tell the child why. He could still feel the shame twisting his gut when Andrew had asked. He hadn't been able to meet his son's eyes.
    How did a man explain to a six-year-old? That what had once been a careless option had become a necessity. That, since Salamanca and Vitoria, he needed the nights of dissipation to forget. To endure.
    No, he could hardly tell a child about the bloodletting. The slaughter. The screams of dying men and horses ... limbs and torsos torn apart by cannon, littering the ground.
    Since returning from the Peninsula he'd found his mind haunted by agonized pleas from dying men. Young men, pouring out their lifeblood, asking for their mothers. Men hardly more than boys, whom he'd sent to their deaths in the name of duty. Duty. The word made him sick!
    The memories gave him screaming nightmares.
    So he kept the nightmares