Bound in Moonlight Read Online Free

lifetime of carnal bliss that I would enjoy as Lady Hickley. I told myself that he surely would have kissed me with more passion if we'd ever been left alone. Perhaps, thought I, he would have attempted even more intimate liberties, which I frankly would have welcomed, fourteen months being a long time to have to wait for the aforementioned bliss. Now that I knew my days as a virgin were numbered, I couldn't wait to find out what I'd been missing. It was all I thought about. I was in heat pretty much twenty-four hours a day.
    Toward the end of July, Consuelo sent me a cable telling me that she'd managed to wrangle me an invitation to King Edward's coronation on August 9, at which she was to serve as one of Queen Alexandra's attendants. At the insistence of my parents, Aunt Pembridge accompanied me to London, where we were guests of the Marlboroughs at Spencer House, which Sunny was letting at the time. I'd thought about cabling Hickley before we set sail to let him know I was coming, but then I decided it would be more fun to surprise him. I inquired after him in London, only to be told that he was spending the rest of the summer touring France with friends, beginning with a sort of extended house party at Château de la Grotte Cachée.
    Once I got over my disappointment, I realized I didn't have to return to New York without seeing him. For a couple of years, I'd been carrying around a little calling card in my purse that Kit Archer had given me when he'd issued a standing invitation to drop by the château if I ever found myself in Auvergne.
    â€œI warrant you will find it a singular experience,” he'd said. “Just show this to the gatehouse guard.”
    The card, which was in a tiny envelope engraved PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL , was of gilt-rimmed ivory stock so heavy you could hardly bend it. On the front was printed, in French and English, RIGHT OF ENTRÉE IS GRANTED TO THE FOLLOWING . Below that, Kit had inked
Miss Emily Townsend
and his initials. The back of the card explained how to get to Grotte Cachée from the nearby city of Clermont-Ferrand, an incredibly convoluted route along unmarked roads. I asked Kit how his employer would feel about a perfect stranger coming to his home.
    â€œSeigneur des Ombres is too busy to cultivate social connections,” he said, “but he enjoys having guests at the château, so he gives me carte blanche to invite whomever I like. I must warn you, Em, it is a place of unbridled libertinage. You will likely witness some very indecorous goings-on, but I shan't think the experience would do you any harm—I daresay it might do you some good.”
    I'd slipped the card into my purse and forgotten about it. Now I was glad I'd held on to it. After the coronation, I convinced Aunt Pembridge that we should make a little side trip to France before returning home. I had no intention, however, of dragging a chaperone with me for a surprise visit with the man about whom I'd been entertaining libidinous fantasies for four months.
    Consulting a map, I saw that Clermont-Ferrand was about a hundred miles from Lyon, where my mother's cousin Biddie owned a château. Biddie's real name, Obedience Blick, couldn't have been more inappropriate, the Blicks being a notoriously wild branch of the family, and Biddie being the quintessential devil-may-care Blick. That was part of the reason I'd always adored her. I knew she spent every summer at that château, so I cabled her, and she invited us to come for a visit.
    When we got there and I told her that my fiancé was at Grotte Cachée, she rolled her eyes and laughed, because of course she knew exactly why I'd come. She offered to lend me her motorcar and driving clothes the next day, and told me not to rush back if I didn't care to—although I promised her I would stay no more than four days, returning by Sunday the seventeenth. She also convinced Aunt Pembridge that she should remain at the château and rest up