Lady Midnight Read Online Free

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