A Midsummer Night's Sin

Dear Reader,

Did you ever meet someone who just made you feel good, glad to be around him, glad to be alive? Someone you just have to look at in order to smile, feel good about yourself and the world in general? Rare, wonderful people.

Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn, known affectionately as Puck, is one of those special people. Sweet, lovable, mischievous Puck.

I didn’t know all that, of course, when he first invaded my subconscious, but once I “met” him—well, I was hooked. He made me smile, he made me laugh—he made me look around at life and see the good about everything. He reinforced my belief in happy never-endings.

What possible defenses could a young woman like Regina Hackett raise to avoid succumbing to Puck’s charms? How can you look at a man who smiles into your eyes and asks, “Do you love life? I do. I love life!” and be able to just walk away?

Oh, how I love Puck. I hope you do, too!

And then please watch for
Much Ado About Rogues
to read about Black Jack Blackthorn, Puck’s brother—and the definite flip side to his fun-loving sibling!

Happy reading!

Kasey Michaels

What revels are in hand? Is there no play,
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

H
E DIDN’T FOLLOW
fashion, he made it. He had the air of the finest salons of postwar Paris about him, fairly reeked of suave sophistication. When he’d taken to growing his blond hair nearly to his shoulders, half of the young fashionables had rushed to do the same, a few going so far as to resort to hairpieces.

He rode a strawberry roan stallion with a white diamond-shaped blaze. Sales of strawberry roan stallions soared, as did the profits of one Jacques Dupuis, former jockey and a true artist with whitewash.

He could make a violin weep, turn a pianoforte naughty and played the flute because he thought it amusing. Unemployed music masters found themselves beleaguered with demands for lessons, and those who would term any music “a beautiful noise” hadn’t yet had their ears abused by the efforts of dozens of tone-deaf young French fops.

He shunned the theater, and tickets sales plunged. He made a joke, and all of Paris laughed. Young ladies dreamed of him, young men fought to be seen with him. Hostesses showered him with invitations…to their parties, to their boudoirs.

They called him Puck, the name delighting them. He was so very unacceptable, yet welcomed everywhere.

He was
le beau bâtard Anglais,
the beautiful English bastard, the beloved pet of Paris Society, and completely, wholly delicious.

And now he had said his adieus to the openly distraught Paris and returned to the land of his birth, just in time for the new London Season.

Where he was known only as Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn.

Bastard.

P
UCK POSED AT THE
mantelpiece in the lavish drawing room of the even more lush mansion in Grosvenor Square, the very heart of fashionable Mayfair. He appeared nonchalant in his fine French clothes, his cravat a masterpiece, his tailor’s appreciation for his client’s fine physique evident in the exquisite cut of the broadcloth jacket and form-fitting trousers molded to his long, lean body.

He wore his most ingratiating smile with the ease of long practice and concealed the intelligence in his fascinating blue-green eyes. Everything depended on how he handled the events of the next few minutes, yet to the casual observer, he seemed affably stupid and as dangerous as a dandelion.

In truth he was on his guard, wary of these two gentlemen, whom he knew to be considerably more complex than just another pair of boring Englishmen, who might be able to trace their ancestry back to the Great
Flood but couldn’t be trusted to otherwise know enough to come in out of the rain.

They’d been playing a game for the past quarter hour, speaking of this and that and the other thing, each pretending the other was anything but what they were. Who’d win this dance of wits and deception was anyone’s guess, but Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn invariably preferred to wager on himself.

“I do admire the English countryside,” Puck remarked, apropos of nothing that had been said thus far. “The area around Gateshead, for example, is quite laudatory. Why, I could wax on about the place for hours.”

Handed that sort of encouragement, Baron Henry Sutton at last cut through the aimless, polite banter, which Puck had known the man had been itching to do since his arrival.

“You’d blackmail us?” The baron looked to his friend, one Richard Carstairs, and said, “And there it is, Dickie. The bastard’s attempting to blackmail us.”

“Oh, hardly, my lord, although I must remonstrate just a little, as I see no reason to bring the circumstances surrounding my birth into the thing,” Puck protested, stepping away from the mantelpiece and further into the game. “I was merely reminiscing on my earlier brief acquaintance with Mr. Carstairs here, when we were both passing a lovely evening in Gateshead last year. Charming place, if a bit off the beaten track for a gentleman such as Mr. Carstairs. Jack, however, one
might discover anywhere, mostly when one least expects to, and up to mischief, of course.”

Dickie Carstairs, a fair-skinned, round-cheeked fellow, whose rather soft body hinted that his main love in life would most probably be a toss-up between his cook and his next meal, turned to the baron, his eyes gone wide. “Hear that? He brought up Jack. Nobody’s supposed to know about Jack. His brother, for God’s sake. Bound to be as wily. Told you we shouldn’t have come here.
Summoned.
I don’t much care for that.”

The baron, clearly the sharper of the two, both in looks and in manner, turned to glare at Puck. “Your brother will hear of this.”

Puck’s smile only broadened. “Oh, yes, indeed, I’m convinced he will. Jack seems to hear about everything, one way or another. He’s uncanny that way, don’t you agree? We call him Black Jack, inside the family, that is. He’s the most romantic of us. Give him my best, would you? And how is— What was the fellow’s name? Ah, now I remember. Jonas. And how is Jonas? I would imagine the nasty man is toes-up in some unmarked grave somewhere far from London and a more civilized English justice, but then, I have a dramatic bent of mind sometimes.”

“If you’re hinting that we took him out and—”

“Dickie, that will be enough,” the baron said silkily. “All right, gloves off, Mr. Blackthorn. Clearly you’re aware that your brother and Mr. Carstairs and myself occasionally perform some small services for the Crown, as they become necessary.”

Puck held up his hands. “Rather a
disposal
service, I would think, and damned handy into the bargain. But, please, no more details. I would much prefer we remain friendly.”

“There’s nothing of friendship about it. You sent us notes revealing just enough information to bring us here, and now you want something in return for your silence. Correct?”

Puck picked up the crystal decanter and gracefully went about refilling his guests’ wineglasses. “Well spotted, sirs. Yes, that’s exactly what I would like. Something in return for forgetting certain events that transpired in Gateshead last spring and your presence there. Nothing earthshaking. A piddling thing, actually. I would like a small—not infinitesimal, yet nothing grand—
entrée
into London Society. A few introductions, taking time to be seen conversing amicably with me in the park, perhaps an invitation to accompany you two grand and socially acceptable personages to a sporting event. I feel confident I can take it from there.”

“Do you hear that? Do you hear that! I will not!” Dickie Carstairs exploded angrily. “A bastard, foisted on the
ton?
With
our
blessing? Unheard of!”

The baron waved his companion to silence. “Your brother Beau tried that, years ago. Tried it twice, as I remember.”

“Yes, I know, and with varied results.” Puck took up his place at the mantelpiece once more.

He had them, he knew he had them. When they looked at him, they had to see enough of Beau to know
he wasn’t the sort to bow and scrape, and enough of Jack to think twice about doing anything to…upset him.

“I am not my brother Beau, gentlemen. Nor am I my brother Jack. We are all sons of the Marquess of Blackthorn, all born on that same, sadly illegitimate side of the blanket, but we are not all the same person. Beau, bless him, once assumed he needed acceptance. Jack rejects all of Society. Privately, I believe he thinks you’re all fools.”

“And you?” the baron asked, his eyes narrowed.

“And I?” Puck shrugged, elegantly, in the French manner. “I ask little of life, actually. I simply wish to enjoy myself and my fellow man. I am a rather entertaining sort, you know. Why, you might even find yourselves liking me. Now, would either of you care for more wine—Dickie, I see your glass is empty again—while we discuss our initial foray into the social whirl? I might suggest Lady Fortesque’s masked ball, set for this Friday evening. A trifle risqué, I understand, both the ball and Lady Fortesque, and most of the
Haut Ton
will avoid both, but certainly not above my touch, don’t you think?”

The baron, clearly a man who had weighed Puck and found him impossible to ignore, put down his wineglass and stood, signaling for Dickie Carstairs to do the same. “Isobel will most probably be delighted with the notion of such a scandal. I’ll see that an invitation is delivered later this afternoon.”

“Perfect,” Puck agreed, clapping an arm over Dickie
Carstairs’s shoulders as he escorted his visitors to the door. “I will see you both at the ball then, won’t I?”

“But…but it’s a masked ball. How will you recognize us?”

“I won’t have to,” Puck told Dickie, thinking the man was a most strange choice for an assassin, as no one ever would have suspected him of having an adventuresome soul. “You will recognize me, approach me. I am, you see,
pour mes péchés,
rather singular.”

“For your sins? I don’t know if I like that,” the unlikely adventurer said, frowning as he looked Puck up and down. “I’ve been wondering if you commissioned that waistcoat here or over in Paris. Damned fine. I probably don’t have the belly for something like that. Or too much belly for it, at any rate, but if you could give me the direction of your tailor, I’d—”

“Oh, for the love of— Come along, Dickie,” the baron said on a sigh and grabbed the man’s elbow as Wads worth personally handed over their hats and gloves and held open the front door for them. Neither man slipped him a copper for his troubles, but that was the quality for you, cheeseparing, when recognizing a servant’s assistance in a monetary way had saved many a man from having his hat and gloves mysteriously and permanently misplaced.

Once the door closed behind his departing guests, Puck looked to the butler. “That went rather well,” he said, displaying his pleased and pleasing smile. “Do you have anything interesting for me, Wadsworth?”

“Yes, sir,” the former soldier said, reaching into his
pocket. “Found some scribbled note in the fat one’s hatband and copied it out here for you. Doesn’t seem to mean much of anything.”

Puck took the folded scrap when it was offered. He would never understand why so many men thought hatbands such a safe hiding place, but wasn’t it nice to know that Mr. Dickie Carstairs was so predictable. “Really? That would be too bad, wouldn’t it? In any event, you’re a jewel beyond price, Wadsworth. I’ll take it from here. Thank you.”

He unfolded the scrap and read its brief contents as he returned to the drawing room.

My apologies. Impudent rascal! Humor him, please. He’s harmless. Saturday, usual place and time. New assignment. J.B.

Puck smiled as he crumpled the scrap and tossed it into the fireplace. “Ah, Jack, and won’t it be lovely to see you again…?.”