Mistress by Midnight (Courtesan Court) by Robinson Maggie

Author:Robinson, Maggie [Robinson, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Two enormous trunks had been unloaded, each filled with toys and amusements for Beatrix and James. Con detected the slightest thaw in his son, for who could resist Chinese fireworks or Wellington’s entire army of lead soldiers? Con had promised to reenact the Battle of Talavera, which re mained unfortunately fresh in his mind. Although not officially attached to the army, Con had done his part for over two years before he was wounded. He had realized even then he took a deliberate risk to his life and courted danger, for in his youth he saw only the limits and bleakness of his marriage.

After his abbreviated honeymoon, he had stepped back into his home as a stranger. Unfamiliar faces and objects surrounded him. Footmen in proper livery raced about with the trunks and cases and crates that had followed them throughout Italy, multiplying at each stop like rectangular rabbits. The worn flagstone floor was now inlaid marble, the dark paneling painted white, a lacy-patterned pale blue paper on the wall. The effect was rather like walking into a snow fort in winter. He looked into the drawing room and saw a vast portrait of his wife hanging over the new mantel. This room, too, was pale and blue, just like his wife, who had been ill these past two weeks. She wanted to go home—she was very certain she was enceinte, she had said one morning cheerfully, before she rushed off to find a basin in their hotel suite. Con had stood uncomprehendingly still until relief washed over him. If Marianna was already carrying a child, his nights need no more be fraught with wine and fantasies of Laurette.

Con had never had much, hadn’t missed it. It was not the lack of money that troubled him, but the loss of his freedom. He’d have to beg his wife so he could pay for a pint at the pub in the village, if she allowed him to go. She made him feel like a callow schoolboy. Yes, she treated him with deference in public. If anything, she was far more vested in his being a marquess than he had ever been. In private she was perfectly if dismissively correct. It was clear who held the pursestrings. Who was in control. His marriage had been a business arrangement, the agreement between his uncle and his father-in-law an insidious and necessary insult to his pride. But his wife had achieved her objective—rising to the peerage, mother to the future Marquess of Conover. He was the tool of her ambition, and much like a stud that had served his purpose, Con felt relegated to the pasture.

No, he was in the paddock, barbed wire fences all around.

It had taken years and miles of travel before he was at peace with his position. When it was past time to come home, Con had convinced himself he could rub along well enough with his wife if that was the only way to be part of his son’s life.

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