Midnight Mistress by Ruth Owen Read Free Book Online Page B

be hers?”
    “You know this
femme rousse
? But this is wonderful!” Raoul rose from his chair and walked to the cupboard, where he pulled out a bottle of fine French brandy and two glasses. “With her help I am sure you can win the trust of this Commodore Jolly, and perhaps others in the Admiralty as well. We shall be done with our task before the month is out. Come—let us drink a toast to your lady.”
    “She is not my lady,” Connor growled. “And I guarantee she is the last person who would help me win anyone’s trust. Not that it matters. I will not see her, tonight or any night. I’m turning down the invitation.”
    Raoul sloshed the brandy he was pouring onto the desk.“Are you mad? We thought we’d have to wait weeks, perhaps months, for an invitation from an officer of Whitehall. You cannot turn it down.”
    “Watch me.” Turning his back Connor shrugged off his coat and began untying his cravat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need some sleep.”
    “You need a lack in the head,” Raoul fired back.
    “Probably. But I’m still turning down the invitation. I won’t use her, Raoul. She was … important to me once.”
    Raoul set down the bottle and studied his friend. Then he walked across the cabin and picked up his coat and hat. “The invitation said that dinner was to be at eight, so I shall be here at six with my report on the commodore.”
    Connor glared at the Frenchman. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m not going.”
    “I believe that you will,” Raoul replied as he fingered the brim of his hat. “I never asked you of the life you led before we met. But I do know the burden we both carry, the debt we both owe.” He settled the hat on his head, and turned for the door. “You will go tonight, English, because it is the only choice your sense of honor will allow you to make.”
    Connor stood for a long time, wrapped in silence, his only movement the gentle rise and fall of the deck beneath his feet. But inside him a battle raged that was every bit as fierce as the one he’d waged near Sicily. He’d resolved never to see Juliana again—he refused to involve her in his dangerous deceptions. Yet every time he made the decision, a picture flashed through his mind of a day two years before, when he’d lain wounded on the deck of a ship, choking on smoke so thick that he could barely breathe, hearing the crash of the cannonballs splintering the hull and the screams of dying men. And overhead, barely visible through the fire and smoke, fluttered a torn and useless white flag of truce.
    Through the smoke he’d caught the gleam of a rifle barrel, and he’d steeled himself for death. But a split second beforethe gun fired a man stepped between him and the rifle, taking the bullet that had been meant for him. It was only after the smoke cleared that he saw who that man was.…
    Two years ago he’d held the body of the man who’d given him back his life and promised to avenge his death whatever the cost. It was only the second promise he’d ever made that he gave a damn about keeping.
    “Guests?” Juliana looked up from her mirror vanity and stared in surprise at her abigail. “Lucy, you must be mistaken. The commodore said nothing to me about any guests tonight.”
    “Beggin’ your pardon, my lady, but the commodore don’t always say what he means to,” the maid remarked as she arranged Juliana’s thick tresses and secured them with a pearl and ivory comb. “And sometimes even when he says it, he don’t say it, if you catch my meaning.”
    Juliana caught her meaning all too well. The commodore was famous for forgetting to mention guests, dinners, or any number of social events. Once he had invited the entire cabinet office over for dinner and completely forgotten to mention it. The kitchen crew had nearly staged a mutiny. Sighing, Juliana took up her powder puff and began patting the inconvenient spray of freckles on the bridge of her nose. “So who are these guests?”
    “Dunno, my