Read Midnight Temptations With a Forbidden Lord for Free Online Page B

curled and cascaded in spirals down her bared shoulders and upper back. The cinch of her waist only further emphasized the becoming width of her hips. Fripperies and fashions aside, it was her impish smile that drew his attention. And that laugh she had that was like a siren drawing in a flock of hapless seamen …
    He was going to have to start calling her trouble. Did she not realize she was biting off far more than she could chew where he was concerned?
    Carleton cleared his throat, not unoblivious to where his gaze was affixed. “My wife gets it in her head to match-make a few chosen members of the ton every season.”
    “Is that so,” he said.
    Did the countess plan to set him up with someone? Or was she more interested in seeing Leo settled into a nice marriage? Marriages were a typical result of the Carletons’ infamous summer parties, but they were always mired in some sort of scandal. He would be quite happy to escape any of her machinations.
    Lord Carleton rubbed his hand over his short-cropped gray beard and gave the ladies in attendance an assessing look. “I would never have guessed that she would include you with this lot of women.”
    That was what Tristan had been thinking. There were three debutantes, four widows with daughters in their midtwenties and nearly close to being unmarriageable spinsters, chaperones of varying ages and forms, and two henpecking mothers. Aside from Lady Charlotte, Tristan really wanted nothing to do with the lot of women attending the Carleton dinner party tonight.
    “Perhaps the match is for Leo?” he suggested. “Lady Carleton was a close friend of Leo’s stepmother. She’d want to see him well settled and all that rubbish.”
    Carleton slapped him on the shoulder and gave it a fatherly squeeze. “True enough, but you are a son to her, too.”
    True, since Lady Carleton had never had children of her own she had in a sense taken him under her wing. She’d been a strong female presence in his youth, right up until his parents had died in a terrible storm at sea when he was sixteen. After that, he’d tried desperately to find his own way in life and had distanced himself from the Carletons in his youthful anger. He’d eventually come around. But there had been a strain in their relationship after he’d grown up and become the man he now was.
    The Carletons had been close friends with both Tristan’s and Leo’s parents. They all owned sugar plantations that occupied a large portion of Barbados—three adjoining properties that made many men envious. The three older men had fought hard together to make sure slavery had been stamped out and abolished in the West Indies in their heyday. It was a legacy that had been hard to live up to. Tristan had never made any significant contribution to society other than to sire a bastard, which the world had far too many of already. Thank God for girls because Ronnie could never be heir to his title. The boy, Rowan, he’d adopted as his own, not that anyone knew the child wasn’t his.
    Regardless, he would always be a shadow of the man his father was, so he focused on what he loved most aside from Ronnie and Rowan: women.
    And that brought him right back to Lady Charlotte. He grinned at her from where he stood. He saw that she took notice of him because her color rose and her fan flicked open to waft cool air on her pink cheeks.
    The dinner bell rang, breaking the spell that had ensnared them. Hopefully they would be sitting next to each other. If not, he’d steal a moment of her time afterward. The doors between the parlor and the dining room slid open and everyone filed into the room to find their names on the table. One didn’t sit by rank in the Carleton household; that would be utterly boring and predictable.
    He shouldn’t be surprised to find his place card next to Miss Camden’s, but he was nevertheless disappointed not to be seated next to the woman he’d finagled an invitation to see again.
    Miss Camden seemed