Lady Midnight Read Free Page B

our possessions are in Venice."
    Her mother laughed again. "My Kate, did I not just say you were clever? You must use that cleverness—always use it."
    Katerina glanced over at the cloth bundle. Of course! Her jewels. How could she forget? A pearl and sapphire necklace, along with the matching earrings, bracelet, and brooch. The set had been a gift from her mother on her twentieth birthday, and she wore them for the first time on that yacht.
    "When I gave them to you, I meant for you to use them to entice a certain gentleman. To display your charms. Now they can bring you a new life," her mother said softly. "It is my last, and best, gift to you. But you must use it quickly, bonny Kate. Before it is too late."
    With one last cool, caressing touch, she was gone. As if she had never been there at all.
    Like a dream.
    Katerina squeezed her eyes tightly shut and let the images her mother's words had conjured for her sweep across her mind. A life of her own choosing. One without the glittering trappings of her mother's life, trappings Katerina had always thought she had to have. It was hard to let all of that, everything she had known in all her twenty years, go.
    But—in the place of jewels and silks could be other things. Lasting things, true emotions as she read of in her beloved poetry.
    Now, with her "death," anything could be within her grasp. Anything at all.
    She had only to reach out for it, and Katerina Bruni, daughter of the most famous courtesan in all of Venice, would cease to exist.

Chapter 1

    England, One Year Later
    Blood. So much blood.
    It stained his hands, his clothes, soaked into his very soul, as he lifted his wife's delicate, broken body in his arms. Caroline's golden hair spilled down in a rippling, sunshine wave, just as it always did, but her violet blue eyes were glazed, sightless as they stared up endlessly at the sky.
    Pain wracked his own body, stabbing at his face, his side, with white-hot blades. It was as nothing to the pain in his heart. He held his wife close, even as he knew she would be forever beyond his touch. The splintered wood of his own wrecked phaeton was all around them.
    "Caroline," he sobbed. "Caroline. This is my fault. I am so sorry—don't leave me! Caro, come back to me. Come back to me...."
    Yet even as he buried his face in the bright cloud of her hair, as she fell limply against him, she faded from his grasp forever. He tried to hold on to her, but she was gone.
    Gone...
    * * *
    Michael awoke with a sharp gasp. "Caroline!" he called. There was no answer from the shadows of his bedchamber. Nothing but his own voice, echoing back to him mockingly.
    It was that dream again. The same dream that always came back to haunt him over the last long five years, just when he thought it was gone forever.
    But it wouldn't leave. Not until he could forget that warm springtime day when Caroline died. And that would be never.
    Michael rolled to his back, staring up at the underside of the bed-curtains. He took a deep, cleansing breath, and slowly came back into the reality of this room, this present moment.
    "I am no longer that reckless boy," he muttered. That careless life, that wild existence of gaming and drinking and dancing and coarse affairs, was buried with Caroline. He was no longer "Hellfire Lindley"; he was Mr. Michael Lindley, younger brother of the Earl of Darcy, respectable country landowner. He looked after his Yorkshire estate, took care of his family and his tenants and employees.
    As far as he could get from the ballrooms and the stews of London.
    Some days, when he was busy riding over his property, meeting with bailiffs, reviewing ledgers, he imagined—no, he knew —that life was left behind. But in the night, it was a very different story. The past and all his mistakes were waiting for him, waiting to grab and choke him.
    Michael threw off the last hazy shackles of dream sleep and pushed himself out of bed. His nightshirt was damp with the sweat of his nightmare. He