Read The Marquis At Midnight for Free Online

a
sensitive endeavor with any degree of success and Bertie, banged up
for attempted theft, would provide exactly the same amount of
scandal as Hester’s own indiscretions.
    ‘While you know that I’m fond of Bertie,’
Grace had begun, trying to find the best possible way of phrasing
it.
    ‘Oh poo. He’s much smarter than he used to
be. He’s matured.’
    Grace very much doubted this. ‘But how can
he steal it? We don’t even know where Lovington has it.’
    ‘It’s in his house in Eaton Square. He
showed it to me when I called around to beg for it back.’
    Grace had looked at her friend, shocked.
‘You went to his house? Alone?’ No woman, married or otherwise,
visited a man’s house unless he was a relative or a very old
friend.
    Warm color flooded Hester’s cheeks. ‘I made
sure that my identity was conceal and I took my maid. I was
desperate.’
    Grace shook her head at the folly of it. In
such ways, reputations were ruined. It was dreadful that Lovington
held the value of her debts and the Woodward necklace, but that was
nothing if Hester destroyed her own good standing by appearing at
an unmarried man’s house. However, it was done and apparently
Hester had emerged unscathed. ‘He actually showed it to you?
Knowing how upset you were?’
    ‘It’s as I told you. Lovington likes to have
power over others. He was amused that I had come to see him.’
Hester had been silent for a moment, then, ‘Actually, he was really
rather unpleasant about it!’
    That conversation had certainly convinced
Grace that Lord Silas Lovington was a very obnoxious man indeed, if
he could take pleasure from another person’s pain.
    On Saturday evening, with Porter once again
absent, Grace and Hester set out for the journey to the Hartwell
ball. Neither of them was in particularly high spirits, although
Hester had assured her that she had told Bertie to be there so they
could explain their plan. Grace wanted to protest that it wasn’t
‘their’ plan, that using Bertram would probably end in disaster,
but Hester was already downcast enough. Lord Lovington was sure to
be there, she’d predicted glumly, but at least Porter did not seem
to be attending, which would spare her the difficulties of keeping
the two men apart.
    With all that had been
happening, Grace had almost managed to forget her dreadful faux pas with the Marquis
of Morvyn at the masquerade ball; almost, but not quite. She and
Hester had experienced a quiet few days and had not been out and
about much so there had been no danger of her encountering him
again. She very much hoped there would be no danger of it that
evening for she had more than enough drama in her life and she was
not keen to add the marquis into the mix.
    He had been causing her more than enough
trouble already.
    Grace had not deliberately kissed the man
responsible for her husband’s death. She had managed to absolve
herself of anything more than foolish impropriety caused by an
excess of unaccustomed freedom, but the one thing she could not
forgive herself for was how the memory of the man’s kiss lingered,
even now. For some reason she dreamt of it, that warm, firm
pressure that had released a cavalcade of fireworks on her foolish,
impressionable body. Twice, she had actually woken up with the
taste of his mouth on her own, or at least on her sleeping
lips.
    It was all very disturbing and Grace was
half regretting her promise to Hester that she would bear her
company a while longer. The sleepy wilds of Yorkshire had never
seemed so appealing, but leaving Hester to her own devices would be
too cruel, so she put all thought of retreat from her head.
    As this was, unofficially, the event that
would open the London Season, both women had dressed in their
finest. Hester had chosen an under slip of silver satin over which
was worn delicate crepe in cerulean blue. The blue looked marvelous
with her skin and eyes and, if it weren't for the fact that those
eyes were faintly shadowed, she would have