Lady Midnight (3 page)

Katerina sobbed in bewilderment. "You never failed me, Mother! You loved me, and gave me everything. A fine education, gowns, jewelry. You were teaching me all you knew, all your secrets. You gave me freedom and riches...."

"Freedom?" her mother whispered, sadder than Katerina could ever have imagined her.
"Cara mia.
A courtesan is the least free of all women. Even a nun in her cloister has more freedom."

"But you always said that your career freed you from the mundane cares of married ladies! You had no household duties, no bowing and scraping to a husband, no dozens of brats clinging to your skirts...." Kate repeated the words she had heard hundreds of times from her mother.

"I did not know the truth! I only knew the perimeters of my own life. It was truly full of jewels and fine things, but you do not know all that I did to earn them. A courtesan must be young and beautiful always. She must laugh and smile and be witty. She must never be tired or ill or make demands, or she would risk being accused by her men of being just like their wives. There is never true emotion, true conversation and meeting of the minds and hearts."

Katerina stared at her mother, confused and fascinated. "I know that being amusing and charming is part of the role of courtesan. You taught me that well."

"It is more than that!" Lucrezia cried sharply, causing Katerina to tremble anew. "Bonny Kate, you must listen to me carefully, for my time here is growing short. If you continue on the path you are on now, you will never have a family or a true home. I tried so hard to groom you for my own life. I even tried to convince myself that it was what
you
really wanted. But you were always so dreamy and romantic, always reading your poetry and your horrid novels. You saw only the surface of my life, not the reality of it. But now you must take this gift you have been given."

Katerina wiped at her tears with the blankets. "What gift, Mother? What could possibly come out of this horrible thing?" She held out her arm, displaying the purple-and-blue bruises imprinted there.

Her mother gave her a fond, rueful little smile. "You are not thinking clearly, my Katerina. And after those books you buried your nose in! Now—think. Everyone will believe you have drowned along with the rest of us. Katerina Bruni is dead. You must make certain that she stays that way.

"You need only go somewhere new, far away, and begin a fresh life. Your father, God rest his soul, was English—perhaps London would hold some attraction for you. But anywhere would suffice for a
different
life."

"Not go back to Venice?" Katerina remembered again her mother's palazzo. She remembered the wild, wondrous parties there during carnival, masked revelers packed to the frescoed ceilings, couples kissing furtively in the shadows, amid glimpses of naked limbs and bosoms and heated cries. She remembered how the laughter and the music and the champagne would go on and on until dawn—and how she would watch from the upstairs gallery, wondering, fearing, what it would be like to be in the midst of that party.

"It is the only life I know," she whispered.

"And that is my fault. I raised you in my own world. But there are other lives,
better
ones, more worthwhile ones, where you can find your own heart away from all the gilded rot. It is all there, just waiting for you to pick it up. Oh,
cara,
truly you are so much more lovely than I ever was, and more clever, too—clever in arts
besides
those of pleasing men. You can do anything you find that your heart desires."

Katerina took in those words, rubbing at her aching temples. Her mind raced with a torrent of thoughts, dreams—and fears. Could her dream mother be right? Could a chance grow from this tragedy? A gift.

She imagined the sort of new life her mother spoke of, a life with a home and family of her own, with love and security. Laughter and books, her body and mind belonging only to herself. A tiny hope bloomed slowly, reluctantly, in her most secret heart, like the rosebud of summer after a long winter. But... "How could I afford to travel to a new place, to buy a new home? All our possessions are in Venice."

Her mother laughed again. "My Kate, did I not just say you were clever? You must use that cleverness—always use it."

Katerina glanced over at the cloth bundle.
Of course!
Her jewels. How could she forget? A pearl and sapphire necklace, along with the matching earrings, bracelet, and brooch. The set had been a gift from her mother on her twentieth birthday, and she wore them for the first time on that yacht.

"When I gave them to you, I meant for you to use them to entice a certain gentleman. To display your charms. Now they can bring you a new life," her mother said softly. "It is my last, and best, gift to you. But you must use it quickly, bonny Kate. Before it is too late."

With one last cool, caressing touch, she was gone. As if she had never been there at all.

Like a dream.

Katerina squeezed her eyes tightly shut and let the images her mother's words had conjured for her sweep across her mind.
A life of her own choosing.
One without the glittering trappings of her mother's life, trappings Katerina had always thought she had to have. It was hard to let all of that, everything she had known in all her twenty years, go.

But—in the place of jewels and silks could be other things.
Lasting
things, true emotions as she read of in her beloved poetry.

Now, with her "death," anything could be within her grasp. Anything at all.

She had only to reach out for it, and Katerina Bruni, daughter of the most famous courtesan in all of Venice, would cease to exist.

Chapter 1

England, One Year Later

Blood. So much blood.

It stained his hands, his clothes, soaked into his very soul, as he lifted his wife's delicate, broken body in his arms. Caroline's golden hair spilled down in a rippling, sunshine wave, just as it always did, but her violet blue eyes were glazed, sightless as they stared up endlessly at the sky.

Pain wracked his own body, stabbing at his face, his side, with white-hot blades. It was as nothing to the pain in his heart. He held his wife close, even as he knew she would be forever beyond his touch. The splintered wood of his own wrecked phaeton was all around them.

"Caroline," he sobbed. "Caroline. This is my fault. I am so sorry—don't leave me! Caro, come back to me. Come back to me...."

Yet even as he buried his face in the bright cloud of her hair, as she fell limply against him, she faded from his grasp forever. He tried to hold on to her, but she was gone.

Gone...

* * *

Michael awoke with a sharp gasp. "Caroline!" he called. There was no answer from the shadows of his bedchamber. Nothing but his own voice, echoing back to him mockingly.

It was that dream again. The same dream that always came back to haunt him over the last long five years, just when he thought it was gone forever.

But it wouldn't leave. Not until he could forget that warm springtime day when Caroline died. And that would be never.

Michael rolled to his back, staring up at the underside of the bed-curtains. He took a deep, cleansing breath, and slowly came back into the reality of this room, this present moment.

"I am no longer that reckless boy," he muttered. That careless life, that wild existence of gaming and drinking and dancing and coarse affairs, was buried with Caroline. He was no longer "Hellfire Lindley"; he was Mr. Michael Lindley, younger brother of the Earl of Darcy, respectable country landowner. He looked after his Yorkshire estate, took care of his family and his tenants and employees.

As far as he could get from the ballrooms and the stews of London.

Some days, when he was busy riding over his property, meeting with bailiffs, reviewing ledgers, he imagined—no, he
knew
—that life was left behind. But in the night, it was a very different story. The past and all his mistakes were waiting for him, waiting to grab and choke him.

Michael threw off the last hazy shackles of dream sleep and pushed himself out of bed. His nightshirt was damp with the sweat of his nightmare. He tore it off impatiently and tossed it to the floor. Naked, he strode across to the room's double windows. He opened the casements and let the chill night air flood over him, bringing calm with it.

The moon was nearly full, casting a pale, greenish glow over the gardens below. Far off in the distance, he saw the tall spire of the village's ancient Norman church. It glowed like an otherwordly scene from one of the horrid novels his wife had loved so much, as if restless, eternal spirits swirled among its tilting and moss-covered stones and angels. Yet on his own property, the gardens and fields of Thorn Hill, all was silent.

Michael leaned his palms against the wooden window ledge, not feeling the tiny sharp splinters that drove into his skin. He stared at the cross atop that distant spire, reaching up to the moonlit heavens.

Silent.

He closed his eyes, absorbing the night's peace into himself. Tomorrow was sure to be a busy day. It always was, during springtime in the country. He should be sleeping. But he knew that sleep was very far away, even as the night worked its slow, calming magic on his roiling thoughts.

Then he heard a noise, a soft thud, from the chamber next door to his. It was
so
soft, it would have been almost imperceptible. But Michael was always attuned to what happened in that room.

He spun away from the window and snatched up a dressing gown from the foot of the bed. He was striding from the chamber even as he shrugged the velvet over his nakedness.

The door to the other chamber was unlocked, and a solitary lamp burned steadily on a low, round table. It flickered in the darkness, casting back the menacing shadows, throwing a soft light over the child peacefully sleeping in the pink-and-white canopied bed.

Or rather the child who
should
be sleeping peacefully in the lacy little bed. She had rolled out of it, as she sometimes did despite the bolsters on either side of her, and she lay in a heap on the pink carpet. Still slumbering.

Michael smiled at the sight of her thumb popped into her rosebud mouth, and he knelt beside her to lift her gently into his arms. She murmured quietly, her head rolling against his chest, but she didn't wake. He laid her back against the ribbon-edged pillows and tucked the blankets around her.

Her tangled golden curls, full of a milky-sweet little-girl smell, tumbled over her brow. He smoothed that hair back, hair so much like her mother's, and lightly kissed her cheek. Just the sight of her brought back a portion of that ever so elusive peace.

When they first came to live at Thorn Hill, Amelia was frightened to be placed in an upper-floor nursery, so far from the grown-ups. Over her nursemaid's protests that he was spoiling the child, he moved her into the empty chamber next to his own. And he had never regretted it. Now he could soothe her bad dreams—and put her back into bed when she was restless in her sleep and fell.

"Sleep well, Amelia, dearest," he whispered. "Know that I will always be here to protect you."

As he could not protect her mother.

* * *

"Michael, my dear! I have such wonderful news today."

His mother was far too cheerful and animated for so early in the morning, Michael thought as he made his way to his chair at the breakfast table. Especially since
some people
had been up since before dawn, unable to sleep. But it made a change from her usual worried frowns, her complaints about their neighbors, so he didn't mind so very much.

He smiled at her as he moved toward his seat, wincing a bit at the bright light from the large windows. Once, in another life, he was able to dance and gamble all night and still go to Gentleman Jackson's for a round of boxing in the morning. Those days were gone. The leg that had been broken in the phaeton crash and then healed wrongly gave him twinges after such sleepless nights. It felt a bit stiff as he lowered himself into the chair.

But he didn't want his mother to know that, and he would not take out his temper on her. He nodded pleasantly as she passed him a cup of steaming coffee. "Have you indeed, Mother? Hm, good news. Now, what could it be? Ah, I know. The cook was able to procure lamb cutlets for dinner. Or the milliner in the village has some new ribbons from London in stock."