Midnight Mistress (3 page)

“Extweemly well spoken,” Lord Renquist exclaimed in his fashionable lisp. Languidly, he twisted a curl of his raven hair, stylishly greased and tortured into the latest Brummel fashion. “I agwee with Lady Juliana.”

“You
always
agree with Lady Juliana,” Hamilton muttered.

“Well, I still think the Archangel is splendidly heroic,” Millicent offered. “There was an account of his foiling of the French attack on the northern shore of Sicily. It seems he brilliantly anticipated the enemy’s every move—”

“There was nothing brilliant about it,” Juliana interrupted. “The French had only one choice. The channel currents run strong and deep in that part of the Mediterranean. Any tar worth his barnacles knows that the only way a ship can approach Portabello harbor is from the leeward si—”

Juliana’s words dwindled to silence as she realized the others were staring at her.
Bilgewater and barnacles!
Her seafaring past crept out at the most inauspicious times. She raised her fan, fluttering it coquettishly in front of her reddening cheeks as she added, “Or so I have heard my father say. Not that I understand a word of it.”

The censoring frowns turned to wry chuckles. Mr. Hamilton patted her arm. “Of course you don’t, my dear. Such talk is for men of business, not pretty young ladies like you. I’d forgotten that the marquis of Albany had a ship.”

“
Fifty
ships,” Juliana murmured, unable to completely eliminate the pride from her voice. “My father owns the Marquis Line, a shipping concern second only to the East India Company in trade routes.”

Lord Renquist reached into the pocket of his plum-colored waistcoat, which had also been tailored by Weston, but which had no need to conceal a corset. If anything, Lord Renquist was a bit on the narrow side, and his wiry frame had given him the reputation of a fencer of some note. Personally, Juliana could not imagine the languid lord wielding anything heavier than the silver snuffbox he pulled from his pocket. “Yes, I’d heard your father dabbled in
twade
,” he intoned as he deposited a pinch of snuff on the back of his hand and gave a bored sniff. “An eccentwic pursuit, to be sure, for a twuly cultivated gentleman is indiffwent to such common twivialities. Still, such failings may be forgiven in so distingwished a gentleman as Albany—especially one with such a lovely and remawkable daughter.”

Juliana barely stifled the urge to ask the pompous gentleman how he could look down on the shipping trade when the merchant captains risked their lives to supply the spices for his food, the tea for his breakfast—indeed, the snuff for his snuffbox. But such a social breach would have made her a pariah in the rarified social circles of the
ton
. She could not afford such censure, not for her father’s sake. Only last week she had received a letter from him in the Caribbean, saying how proud he was of the accomplished lady she had become, and how he was certain she would become as much a credit to the Albany family as her beautiful, refined, and immensely popular mother had been. He would be so disappointed in her if he heard that she had given Renquist a set-down like an angry sailor.
Even if he deserved it
.

Gritting her teeth, she gave Lord Renquist a glittering smile. “La, sir, you make my head light with such compliments. A poor creature such as I cannot bear the weight of so much acclaim.”

Renquist leaned his dark head closer and dropped his voice to a fervent whisper. “That is not all I wish you to bear, dear lady. Have you given more thought to our pwior conversation, when I asked you to be my w—?”

“The minuet!” Juliana exclaimed, cutting off the lord’s inquiry. She turned to Millicent and Mr. Hamilton and flashed them a brilliant, apologetic smile. “Heavens, I promised this dance to Commodore Jolly and he will be absolutely
devastated
if I do not seek him out. If you will excuse me …”

She slipped out of the parlor before the others could protest.

Once she was out of sight of the others she slowed her pace, lingering behind one of several large potted ferns that lined the grand ballroom. Her dance with Jolly had merely been an excuse to leave Renquist’s proposal behind. She had few qualms about deserting him so abruptly—despite his lofty title, the man was an ass, and she had little doubt that his
tendre
for her was based less on affection than on the fact that he owed a small fortune in gambling debts. Besides, his was not her only proposal. She had received three offers of marriage, one from a viscount she felt had a true regard for her. But when she had opened her mouth to accept him, the words had stopped in her throat. It made no sense. She longed for a family, and for children of her own to love and cherish.
What is the matter with me? I am past twenty—nearly on the shelf. Yet when a fine man offers me marriage, I turn him away like all the rest
.

“Farthing for your thoughts?”

Juliana’s frown smoothed into a sincere smile. “Meg, you minx. How could you leave me alone with the likes of Lord Renquist?”

Margaret Evangeline Evans’s usually sober expression turned to one of pure mischief and the eyes behind her spectacles gleamed. “My attendance would have made scant difference—the man treats me with all the regard of a stick of furniture. But I paid for my desertion. For the past quarter
hour I have been fending off the attentions of the Very Reverend William Hardy, who has informed me that God has called me to join him in his work among the heathens in India.” She winced, pushing back the tight brunette curls that never seemed to stay in place. “Honestly, Julie, just because I am as poor and plain as a missionary’s wife does not mean I want to be one.”

“You are not plain,” Juliana stated. Dark and petite as her Welsh ancestors, Meg Evans may not have had the cream complexion and the statuesque beauty that were the rage of the London set, but her heart was as true as a champion-aimed arrow. “And as for not being wealthy … I daresay there are plenty of men who would jump at the chance to marry a lady of rare intelligence and fine spirit, even without a fortune.”

Meg gave her a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. “I fear you are beginning to believe those Minerva novels we used to purchase in the bazaar when the commodore wasn’t looking. But I can assure you, if I ever do marry, it will be to a staid, stuffy and boring businessman who will set me up in a cozy little parlor and keep me warm and safe.”

Meg’s fine voice was as lyrical as a Welsh song, yet Juliana picked out the wispy thread of bitterness weaving through the bright tones. Meg’s father, an itinerant actor, had dragged the girl and her gently bred mother through nearly every rural town in England in his quest for fame. The gypsy lifestyle had been hard on his young daughter and devastating on his wife, who died of consumption when Meg was barely fourteen. Griffin Evans had carted his daughter along with him for a few years more, but his interest in the girl lessened as his disappointment in his flagging career grew. In the end he had deposited her on the doorstep of Commodore Horatio Jolly, an old friend of his dead wife’s family, and left without a backward glance.

Jolly and his mother took her in as a companion for their other ward, the daughter of the seafaring marquis of Albany,
who had been in their charge almost since she left the schoolroom. Far more canny than her son, Mrs. Hortensia Jolly was well-connected in the right circles, and though circumstances had forced her to abandon social pursuits, she still was known for launching young ladies properly into society and securing them advantageous matches—which, of course, was the solitary goal of every well-bred young lady. Since they both came from such unusual backgrounds, the two girls had become fast friends, but despite their closeness Meg had never spoken of the years she spent alone with her father. Meg had been half-starved when she had been abandoned, and a year later, when her father had been killed in a drunken carriage accident, Meg had not shed a single tear. Juliana, whose unusual upbringing had given her a very ungenteel knowledge of just how cruel the world could be to young women, surmised that the girl had lived through hell.

“You
will
marry,” Juliana promised. “And he shall be the finest, bravest and most handsome a gentleman in the land. I will see to it.”

Meg’s smile deepened. “Well, if anyone can arrange such an impossibility, you can. But I doubt he shall be the finest and bravest gentleman. After all,
you
have already set your cap for the Archangel.”

Juliana unfurled her fan and began to wave it under her chin with little of the grace she had shown before. “Heavens, where did you procure such an absurd notion? I know that half the unmarried ladies in London—and a few married ones as well—have made a proper cake of themselves fawning over the man. But I am not so easily enamored. He is a sailor like my father. I am curious about him in an entirely detached sort of way—like a botanist studying a rare kind of plant. Nothing more.”

Meg’s grin turned sly. “Like a plant, you say. Then why have you pored over the news accounts of his exploits like they were holy writ? Why did you practically swoon at Almack’s last month when we heard the rumor that he might
have been killed while defending Sicily? And why did you practically browbeat dear Jolly into attending the Morrows’ party tonight, when you can barely stand the haughty earl or his equally insufferable friends?”

“All right!” Juliana snapped shut her fan and glared at her friend, dropping her voice to a clandestine whisper as she continued. “Perhaps I have followed the man’s adventures closely, but ’tis because I admire his courage and nautical prowess. Pray, do not lump me in with the other foolish, fainting females who grow starry-eyed at the mere mention of his name. I am most emphatically not enamored with him.”

“Perhaps you should be. I have heard he is handsome as the devil.”

Juliana had heard much the same, but she had assured herself that it didn’t matter. “He could have one eye and a wooden leg for all I care. It is his skill I admire, not his appearance. I know the waters he sails. They are some of the roughest, most treacherous seas in the world, yet he navigates them with a master’s skill, a skill I have not seen since—”

Juliana bit her tongue. She’d shared much of her past with Meg, but not all of it. No, definitely not all of it.

After that fateful night, Connor Reed’s name had never been spoken in her house or on the marquis’s ships. Her father had forbidden it, and the one servant who had thoughtlessly done so had been sacked on the spot. The few officers who had been friends with Connor seemed just as anxious to forget the man’s existence as her father. As for Juliana, she’d thought she would die of the pain of Connor’s betrayal. She’d prayed to die. But her young, healthy body betrayed her as surely as Connor had. Instead of wasting away, she grew stronger. Life went on. She went back to finishing school. She made new friends. She grew into an admired and accomplished young lady. She even fell in love a few times, just to prove that she could. In time, the memory of the boy who had broken her heart faded like a transitory whitecap on an ocean wave, until the only time she remembered him at all
was in dreams of the carefree days of their youth, when they would outrun thieves in the back streets of Madagascar, or climb like monkeys through the rigging of her father’s ship, or play on the beaches of Tahiti.…

“Julie?”

The concern in Meg’s voice snapped Juliana back to the present. She looked around at the swirling dancers, the gossiping guests, the blazing chandeliers, the music, the laughter, the anticipation. There was no room in her crowded life for ghosts. She squared her shoulders and shook off her past like a bit of dust on her sleeve. “I admire the man,” she repeated as she glanced at the velvet-curtained entryway where the Archangel was to make his appearance. “I admire anyone who makes the seas safer for my father and other captains. But the Archangel is still a privateer. He sails for money, not honor. And I learned long ago not to put overmuch faith in heroes.”

“What?” a nearby voice demanded. “What’s all this about ‘haste in heroes’?”

A big man with a wide smile loped toward them through the crowd. With his graying temples, commanding figure, and liberally decorated naval uniform, Commodore Sir Horatio Tiberius Jolly looked the picture of uncompromising authority, but there was a pleasant befuddlement in his grin that suggested otherwise, as if the world were a chess game where he was always one move behind.

“Not
haste
in heroes, Jolly dear,” Meg explained as she stepped forward and twined her hand through her guardian’s arm. “
Faith
in heroes. Juliana has her doubts about our guest of honor, the Archangel. Have you met him yet?”

“Me? Odds fish, no. Dunno a thing about the blighter, save that he’s quite a devil with the rapier. Like me in my younger days, what?”

Meg and Juliana shared a smile. Commodore Jolly might have had the size and strength to be an accomplished swordsman, but his kind heart would have made him useless
in a fight. Though he made friends easily and had moved steadily up the ranks of the Admiralty, there was little evidence that he had ever been in a battle. Currently, he worked at Whitehall in an office with a large window and a small desk, where he did, in the words of Juliana’s father, “as little as humanly possible.”

But while some may have disputed Commodore Jolly’s wit, there was no one in the Upper Ten Thousand who doubted his heart. What he lacked in cleverness he made up for in compassion, and as Juliana watched he gave Meg’s hand a fatherly pat. She thought how lucky they both were to have such a kind-hearted guardian, even if he was somewhat vague on facts.
A devil with a rapier, my eye. The dear man couldn’t harm a beetle
.

A commotion on the far end of the room caught her attention. The music died and the dancers stopped midstep, looking perplexed until they saw the velvet curtain begin to part. The Archangel had arrived! Commodore Jolly and the two girls stepped toward the curtain along with the other guests. As they advanced, the crowd pressed around them, pushing and jostling the trio with an almost stifling closeness. Jolly tried to squire his charges through the throng, but the crowd closed around him and cut him off. Meg and Juliana pushed after him, but at the same time a tipsy, rotund gentleman stumbled forward and fell into Meg’s back, knocking her so violently that her spectacles fell off and clattered to the wooden floor.