Free It Happened One Midnight (PG8) by Julie Anne Long

safely in the audience. He observed, amused and somewhat relieved to be completely ignored, while she allotted Argosy a few more champagne sips worth of flattery and warmth before drifting off to enchant another guest.
    He wasn’t about to meet that woman anywhere at midnight.
    But he did like the way she moved, Jonathan thought absently, watching her walk away. It was the way champagne would move if it was a woman, all light and fluid elegance.

Chapter 7

    H E LEFT A HOPEFUL Argosy behind at her salon before the sun dipped too low in the sky, with a vague promise to see him at White’s this evening, but only if Argosy was buying. He walked as far as Bond Street, taking great punishing, cleansing draughts of clear cold air, where he paused.
    He was held captive in front of a shop featuring Italian confections.
    For there, right in the window, nestled in among a number of different pastries, was a pile of fruit molded from marzipan.
    And lo and behold, among them was what appeared to be a cluster of raspberries.
    He smiled. It was an omen, he was sure of it. Surely things would go his way, despite his father’s threats.
    He fished through his pockets, decided he’d sacrifice a few pence for the sake of his sister. Violet would laugh when she saw them. He chose several, and the shopkeeper wrapped them as tenderly as eggs. Jonathan tucked the little bundle into the inside pocket of his greatcoat, and turned to leave, a smile on his face.
    And the smile froze, for there, with her hand on the door of the shop, dressed in sleek scarlet wool, stood the beautiful Lady Philippa Winslow.
    Except at the moment her eyes and mouth were narrow slits. Which was unusual, since both were generally large and generous and . . . open.
    Right now her mouth seemed to be trembling with the effort of holding back some sort of verbal earthquake.
    “Philippa!” His voice thrummed with memories and enthusiasm. “What a pleasure it is to see—”
    “You might have told me,” she hissed. And before he could blink or duck— SMACK! —up flew her hand and cracked him on the cheek.
    It sent him staggering a step backward.
    “The bloody hell . . . ?”
    But she’d whipped around and was already gone, boarding her carriage again, trailing a look of melodramatic heartbreak over her shoulder.
    The shopkeeper, witnessing the entire thing, was shaking his head to and fro, and tsking.
    “The women, they are lunatics, si?”
    “Si,” Jonathan agreed fervently. Hand against his cheek. Staring, narrow-eyed, after the rapidly disappearing carriage. An awful suspicion uncoiling in his mind.
    “The amore, it is worth it, si?”
    “This is where, kind sir, I fear our opinions diverge,” he said darkly.
    Baffled and furious, he walked the rest of the way home, allowing the air to cool his face while he rifled through his memories, his assignations, his every move since he’d last seen her two weeks ago, to ascertain what he might have done to deserve assault.
    Women were mad capricious creatures; this was the only explanation he could arrive at.
    So much for omens. He would tell Violet about it, and then tell her it was all her fault.
    T HE THEME OF the day appeared to be rude surprises; he arrived home to find his parents unexpectedly in residence at their London town house.
    “Mother. Father. What a pleasure.” He tried and failed to inflect that sentence. “I thought you intended to stay in Pennyroyal Green for a time.”
    He stood still for a cheek kiss from his mother; his father lowered a newspaper, nodded to him, and raised it up again.
    “Violet insisted I would enjoy a bit of shopping in town and said she would be just fine for a day or so without me, so I decided to accompany him. Just for a day or so.”
    I’ll bet she insisted, Jonathan thought, bleakly amused.
    “And your father has a meeting with the Duke of Greyfolk.”
    Ah. The Duke of Greyfolk. Jonathan suppressed a dry smile. So his father had been listening to him.
    He