Free A Lady’s Secret by Jo Beverley

only to find her father.
    If only that were so easy.
    She knew the location of his various houses, but not where he was right now. He was an important person at court, so she’d assumed he’d be where the court was, but now it seemed that might not be so. She would check his London house first, and then the one in Hampshire.
    If she found him, there was always the risk that her father would deny her. Her mother had been adamant that he wouldn’t, but with time Petra’s faith in her mother’s certainties had faded. Her mother had been ill and desperate and thinking of a man she’d known more than twenty years ago. The only proof Petra had to offer him was a letter from her mother and a picture—a picture of an eye.
    Her mother had explained that such images had been the height of romance back then, especially in the whirling mysteries of a Venetian masquerade. Artists had sat in the streets ready to execute such miniatures on the spot, sometimes even without the sitter unmasking. To her mother it had been impossible that the then Lord Grafton would have forgotten her, but Petra had wondered all along. A young English lord traveling through Italy and Greece, supposedly for his education. How many liaisons had there been? How many were remembered weeks later, never mind decades?
    And even if he remembered, even if he believed the story, why should he embrace a bastard daughter who turned up out of nowhere? Petra sighed. She’d doubted all along, but this had been her only hope. Her brother was now the head of the family and he had turned against her. Her other brother and sisters feared his displeasure, and once Cesare had revealed her paternity they’d used that as excuse to ignore her mother’s pleas. Her mother’s family, far off in Austria, had fallen from favor and didn’t have the resources to intervene.
    As for aristocratic Milan, she’d been foolish with Ludo and not discreet enough, so when Cesare had let word spread that she was not his father’s true daughter, most had shrugged and said that being the acknowledged mistress of il conte di Purieri wasn’t so bad a fate for one such as she. No one wanted to offend the Morcini, Ludo’s family, least of all Cesare. He might be il conte di Baldino now, but he needed the alliance with the Morcini to pursue his ambitions.
    Politics, politics. She’d raged to her mother that politics and the ambitions of men could cripple her life, but her mother had been able to do nothing but shrug. She herself had been married to a foreigner she didn’t love for political advantage.
    Politics. They had politics in England, too, and her father was deeply involved in such things. If he accepted her, would he see just a new pawn in his games? Could Ludo bring pressure to bear in England? Austria ruled Milan, and Austria had been Britain’s enemy in the recent war, so she hoped not. But could she be seen as an enemy?
    Even aware of all these problems, she’d been sure that if her plan failed, she could find a place in a convent and take full vows. Anything was better than being Ludovico’s whore.
    Now it seemed that wasn’t possible, and she might have Varzi in pursuit. Which meant, she suddenly realized, that she was putting Robin and his men in danger.
    That nursery rhyme came back to her.
    Who did kill Cock Robin?
    I, said the sparrow,
    With my bow and arrow.
    I did kill Cock Robin.
    She shivered from mental and physical exhaustion, feeling she’d sleep as soon as she lay down anywhere but here. Here, she was reluctant to lie on a dirty bed, but also strangely reluctant to surrender to oblivion.
    What, did she think her hosts were going to creep in and murder her? She was no threat to them.
    She unpinned her veil from her cap, setting the pins in the gray cloth for storage, and then looked around for a place to put it. Not liking the look of any surface, she tucked it over her belt, remembering the Saint Veronica cloth. Perhaps tomorrow night she’d be able to wash