Midnight in Your Arms Read Online Free Page B

repelled by her manner, which was unnatural. He didn’t love her. He couldn’t. And he still harbored a childish fancy that he would like to marry a woman he loved.
    Certainly he didn’t need to marry. No gentleman did, except for the getting of progeny, which concerned him not at all. His nephew Freddy would inherit Stonecross, though the child had more than enough estate and fortune of his own. Alaric’s sister, Lizzie, had married very well indeed. They would be coming to Stonecross for the party, of course, even though he had written Lizzie not to. Why not, darling? she had written back gaily. I’ve nothing better to do, after all. London is frightfully dull this time of year. Alaric was of the opinion that the sooty city was frightfully dull at every time of year, but he hadn’t bothered arguing. Like Ellen, Lizzie would do as she liked.
    Alaric sighed as the bell gonged to signal the family to dress for dinner, though it would be a dismal affair, with only himself and Ellen. His father didn’t eat in company any longer, but took his meals on a tray in his bedchamber. Alaric wished he could get away with doing the same. He didn’t feel like eating but he would not do Ellen the discourtesy of failing to appear. He was still something of a gentleman, if only a paltry one, and she had done nothing to deserve rudeness. It wasn’t her fault that she had become so tiresome. No doubt he had, too. Staying too long buried away at Stonecross would transform even the most sparkling personality into that of a complete dullard. No wonder Ellen wanted a party. He would let her have it and be as gracious about it as he could.
    Jeffries, his valet, came silently into the room with the shaving set he kept in perfect order. Alaric allowed him to scrape away the prickling stubble, evidence of one more day spent in aristocratic indolence. He was shaved daily because Ellen liked to see him clean and smooth. Alaric wouldn’t bother if it wasn’t for her scrutinizing gaze, any more than he would bother putting on the dark blue dressing gown she had given him for Christmas. He knew how much it would hurt her feelings if he didn’t wear it, even though she never saw him in it.
    He sat down before the glass to allow Jeffries to brush his damp hair, ignoring the man’s disapproving throat noise as he handled its unfashionable length. Alaric gazed at himself by the light of the lamp that had been turned high on the dressing table, noticing how little shadow it managed to dispel. October really was the gloomiest month. He wondered why he had had the perversity to have been born in it. He much preferred May. Had he been born in May, no doubt he would have had a much more delightful personality.
    When he was a child, his nanny had told him the most appalling stories about children who were born on All Hallows, as he had been. “They ain’t like other children at all, Master Alaric,” she liked to tell him, with an ominous tone in her voice. Certainly, he didn’t feel like an ordinary person with ordinary cares, and he always felt strangely restless in October, his skin creeping and crawling beneath his clothes. The world seemed suddenly uncanny, and watchful. He felt as though he was walking between worlds, which was how one was meant to feel, if one put any stock at all in the folk superstitions of people like Nanny, who was the granddaughter of a Devon hedge witch, if she was to be believed. As a child, Alaric had always believed her. In October, he believed her even now.
    He tolerated being dressed with his customary indifference, allowing Jeffries to move him about like a child deploying a toy soldier. When he was perfectly presentable according to Jeffries’s impeccable eye, the valet stood back and allowed Alaric to survey himself in the mirror. He did so as though it meant something to him, his face and his physique, the perfectly starched collar and beautifully tailored tailcoat that enclosed his body. He took in his