The Mistress Memoirs

by Jillian Hunter

  Bledridge looked around. Kate shook her head. Brian had already pounded up the stairs, presumably to find his mother and siblings, judging by the screams of joy that resounded through the house.

  Colin laughed. “One would think they had been parted for a year and not a week.”

  “One would think they’d had an atrocious upbringing by the din they are making,” Kate said.

  Colin stared at her. “I like the sound of children’s laughter.”

  Bledridge cleared his throat. “Would you prefer to wait in the drawing room? Madam does take some time at her toilette.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Kate murmured.

  Moments later Bledridge ushered them into a small room that overlooked the street. To Kate’s pleased surprise, the furnishings reflected a simple but expensive taste. Of course, she hadn’t seen Georgette’s bedchamber yet.

  “Well,” she whispered to Colin, “what do you think?”

  He looked at the white satin sofa. “I would hazard a guess that the children are forbidden to step one foot inside this room.”

  They sat down carefully together on the sofa. “This is rather awkward,” he said under his breath. “What does one say to the man he has wrongly persecuted?”

  Kate didn’t have an opportunity to answer. Georgette came floating into the room in a pale yellow morning dress, Mason trailing closely in her cloud of perfume.

  Colin drew Kate to her feet. She rushed forward to embrace Georgette. “You look ravishing, as to be expected, madam,” she said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I’ve missed you more,” Georgette said with her usual frankness. “Mason is a thoughtful lover, but he’s hopeless as a companion, and Nan has not approved of a single governess who has applied for your position. No one will ever compare to you, Kate.”

  * * *

  Mason had wavered when he entered the room, hoping that Georgette or Kate would guide him through his conversation with Sir Colin. But the two women left him alone, and when he glanced up he realized that Colin had extended his hand to him in a gesture of conciliation.

  “Sir,” he said, “it is an honor to receive you in my house.”

  Colin looked him in the eye. “It’s an honor to be invited. I expect that we’ll meet quite often to discuss business matters. I am quite confident that the company will thrive under your management. Of course, the ultimate decision will be made by my eldest brother. I understand that he is returning to England.”

  “You would be willing to trust me?” Mason shook his head in disbelief. “After all the grief that my father and Hay caused your family?”

  “You took care of my son when I was unaware that he existed.”

  Mason smiled. “I only caught a glimpse of him running through the hall to his mother, but I vow he has grown two feet taller since we lived in East Crowleigh. I am fond of him.”

  Colin laughed. “I became attached to his brother and sister myself.”

  “Oh, yes. They consider ‘Castle’ to be quite the hero.”

  “Then perhaps we can consider each other to be friends as well as business partners.”

  Epilogue

  Colin watched his wife undress for bed later that night. “There was a moment tonight as we arrived at the opera that the crowd came between us. I felt sheer panic. I love you so much that at times I wish I could keep you to myself in a tower.”

  Kate reached for her night rail only to find herself naked in his arms, falling beneath him on the bed. His mouth covered hers, his kisses as essential to her as breathing.

  “If it’s any consolation,” she whispered when he sat up to remove his shirt, “I think you might want to hide in a tower yourself when Georgette’s memoirs are published.”

  He grimaced. “Then what she has revealed about me is truly that unflattering?”

  She rose to pull his shirt from his shoulders, her eyes illumined with mischief. “On the contrary—what is written about you will make you the object of every woman’s secret desire. I’m afraid that from the moment her book is published, I won’t be able to let you out of my sight.”

  “Then don’t. And I shall be forced to become the object of your secret desires alone. I believe between that duty and raising a family, I will have no incentive to care what other women think of me.”

  Continue reading for a special preview

  of Jillian Hunter’s next sensual and

  exciting historical romance in the

  Boscastle Affairs series,

  The Countess Confessions

  Coming from Signet Select in February 2014, available wherever books and e-books

  are sold!

  The fortune-teller’s tent was the scandal of the party. It huddled beyond the reach of the light shed by lanterns that twinkled in the trees. Even the footmen positioned in the garden wondered whether it had been pitched illegally or for entertainment. Judging by the chattering young ladies and gentlemen lined up on the footbridge to the dark hollow where the gypsy had encamped, no one cared why she was there as long as she predicted romance.

  Here today. Gone tomorrow. A gypsy never stayed in one place for long. Few of the well-heeled guests would have found the courage to approach her if she had not appeared at the party. What an enchanting surprise.

  “Lord Fowler must have paid her. She’s reading for free, I heard.”

  “Well, I hope she doesn’t run out of inspiration before my turn.”

  Inspiration? It was patience the fortune-teller needed. So far Miss Emily Selwick had predicted only happy outcomes for the lovelorn, and those had exhausted her talent for deception. The fifth person to seek her services happened to be a cad whom Emily disliked too much to hide her distaste. He whipped his horse to show off, treated his servants like lumps of dirt, and stared with vulgar fascination down Emily’s bodice while she feigned interest in the palm of his left hand.

  “I fear, Mr. Prickett, that your palm reveals a short lifeline.” She drew her hand from his and slid back into her creaking chair.

  “Nonsense,” he said in an indolent voice. “Longevity runs in the family. Give me the name of the next lady fortunate enough to share my bed.”

  “Toad.”

  “I beg your pardon.” His face portrayed the conceit of a man who refused to believe he had been dealt an insult. “Did you say ‘Miss Todd’? I don’t know anyone by that name. Is she here tonight? A lady I’ve yet to meet?”

  “How should I—”

  A loud cough from behind the tent reminded Emily that a fortune-teller told her clients what they wanted to hear, not the truth. But, honestly, what did she know of palm reading and tarot cards? Only what her half brother Michael had unwillingly crammed into her head.

  She could not have been in her right mind when she had allowed her friend Lucy, Lord Fowler’s daughter, to talk her into this scheme. Emily should have listened to Michael instead of letting Lucy’s enthusiasm for matchmaking erode her judgment.

  “You are desperate, Emily.”

  “I am desperately in love, yes.”

  “With a gentlemen who does not realize you exist.”

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” Emily had suggested. “He notices other ladies. I’ve tried to make him notice me.”

  “You might have been too obvious.”

  “And wearing a curly black wig, tinting my skin, and telling omens is a subtle way to draw his attention?”

  “You will not be Emily. You shall be a fortune-teller who slips Emily’s name into his thoughts. As soon as you’re finished, you will disappear, remove your disguise, and become Emily again.”

  Mr. Prickett’s voice startled her back into her role. “Where am I to meet this lady?” he asked, apparently unaware that his plans for a lustful evening were of no concern to Emily.

  Her brother bumped up against the tent, another warning to her. Michael was invigorated by his mystical Romany blood, which came from the secret affair their mother had carried on a month before she married the man who had believ
ed himself to be Michael’s father and was Emily’s. When the young baroness was dying she had revealed the truth to her husband, cleansing her conscience and creating hostility between the baron and Michael that continued to this day. Only after Michael returned from war had he and the baron made a tenuous peace. It would be a humiliation for the baron to admit he had been cuckolded, that his only son and heir was not his own.

  Mr. Prickett’s voice jarred her again. “What else do you see for me and this woman?”

  “Separation. Woe. Perhaps even a lawsuit.”

  He frowned. “Why don’t you give the cards a try?”

  “The reading is over,” she said. “I have lost contact with the other side.”

  “What other side?” he demanded with a doubtful look.

  The other side of the tent. The side of her that claimed some link to sanity. “Go,” she said, rising from the noisy chair.

  “But—”

  “Next!”

  He started to protest until a masked lady entered, forcing him to either make a scene or an exit. Fortunately he chose to leave. The lady who hurried around him perched on the stool in front of Emily’s table. “Well?” she asked, biting her lip as she lowered her Venetian half mask. “Is our little fortune-teller ready to meet her fate?”

  She stared across the table at Lucy’s cheerful face. “Is he outside?” she whispered.

  “He certainly is.”

  “How does he look?”

  “No different than usual. Are you going to read my cards?”

  “Not again. We spent all last night reading them, and Michael has given me so many details about the deck that I’m afraid I don’t remember what all the inverted positions mean.”

  “Make them up. None of us at the party know. There’s only one person who matters. Read the future in my palm.” She held out her hand. “Practice for your next customer.”

  “I can predict your future if, against all odds, I manage to convince Cooper that he and I belong together. You will be a bridesmaid at our wedding.”

  “How lovely.”

  “But if by any chance he recognizes me, you and I will be found out and sent to our aunts for discipline. We shall spend the next season in disgrace.”

  A pleasant male voice called from the head of the line outside the tent’s entrance. “Are you almost done in there? The band is tuning up in the ballroom, and champagne is being served. We don’t want to miss the dance.”

  “That’s him,” Lucy said as if Emily would not recognize the voice that haunted her dreams. “I’ll slip out the back and listen. Or do you prefer privacy?”

  “Privacy? Michael has his ear to the tent so that I don’t make an utter fool of myself. You might as well return to the party before your father finds out what we’ve done.”

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s too busy entertaining his important—”

  A commotion of raised male voices, one of them Cooper’s, diverted Lucy and Emily’s attention. It sounded as if he and another man were exchanging words. But Cooper never quarreled. His even temper was one of the qualities Emily adored.

  “Are they arguing?” Lucy whispered, her eyes wide with disbelief.

  “Hush. I think so.”

  “Well,” Cooper said, more placating than combative, “I have been standing in line a dashed long time, sir, but if you are in a hurry, I suppose I—”

  Emily could not make out what else Cooper said. A deeper voice responded, and there followed a silence.

  “I shall investigate,” Lucy said before Emily, prompted by instinct, could ask her to stay.

  She reached for the handle of the basket, in which several decks of tarot cards sat neatly tied in red silk ribbons. “Michael?” she said over her shoulder, but he gave no answer. Had he left his post to investigate the disturbance? She turned her head to glimpse Lucy escaping the tent. No sooner had her friend disappeared than the seventh person stepped inside.

  Seven. It was a mystical number from ancient times. Michael might not believe in their mother’s superstitions, but he did not disbelieve, either. When he’d suggested that assigning Cooper a number in line would give Emily time to prepare herself for his reading, she hadn’t realized that she would become such a popular attraction at the party.

  But Michael was gone. And the stranger standing before her in all his charismatic arrogance did not resemble the man she had expected, in demeanor or appearance. His hard face might not have disconcerted Emily if she had met the man before and had developed some immunity to his impact.

  Seven.

  Seven was a lucky number.

  There were the Seven Hills of Rome. Seven sisters of the Pleiades. Seven days in the week. Seven archangels. Seventh heaven. Shakespeare’s seven ages of man.

  The number did, however, possess some dark connotations. An English gentlewoman visiting London would never want to explore the stews of Seven Dials. And wasn’t there a fairy-tale giant who wore seven-league boots?

  Emily leaned all the way back in her chair and stared at her seventh customer as he sat down casually on the stool. He cast an enormous shadow in the candlelit tent. He was wearing boots, too, with a long black evening jacket over a white shirt, and a pair of black pantaloons. She had never seen him before. She would not have forgotten those impious blue eyes and the smile that said he fully expected to be forgiven for ruining her scheme.

  “I hope you don’t mind my switching places with the other young man in line,” he said, his gaze taking in her appearance as if he sensed there was something odd about it but he wasn’t sure what. “I ran into a spot of embarrassment at the party. I noticed a person I wasn’t ready to encounter quite yet. I needed a place to hide out to collect my thoughts.”

  “What happened to the man who was next in line?” Emily asked, taken back by his aplomb.

  “Who? Oh, him. He was kind enough to give me his place.”

  “But . . . did he leave?”

  “I’ve no idea. Does it matter?”

  She realized then that there were seven deadly sins, and that the man who stared back at her with false guile looked prepared to commit at least one of them before the night came to an end.