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

tried to peer through his father’s newspaper to read his devious mind, but his father didn’t so much as twitch.
    How unsurprised Jonathan would be if the Duke of Greyfolk was suddenly invited to join the Mercury Club. For men like his father and the duke tended to get what they wanted in any way they possibly could, and they both wanted that Lancaster Mill.
    And so at eight o’clock he sat down with his parents to a full dinner of lamb chops and peas. He listened to his mother tell his father about a relative who suffered from a liver complaint. His father actually appeared to be interested. Then again, he’d had years to perfect feigning interest in all manner of things in order to get what he wanted.
    The conversation was giving Jonathan a liver complaint. He absently thought it would be an excellent idea to marry, if only in order to bear progeny and then torture them with conversations about liver complaints.
    He’d learned over the years that a little wine was often the answer to life’s general other complaints, so he took a hearty gulp.
    “Your father tells me you intend to wed before the year is out, Jonathan.”
    Jonathan choked.
    “Smaller sips, dear,” his mother said, as if he was nine years old.
    He recovered with some aplomb and gently set down his glass. “I didn’t precisely say that, Mother,” he began carefully.
    “Your father isn’t in the habit of mishearing things, Jonathan. I think it’s a wonderfully mature decision and I must say I approve.” She smiled lovingly at him, damn it all. She was so happy, and this was so rare. “We’ll fill a nursery with your babies in no time. Surely you noticed the heaps of invitations awaiting in the entry. I put the word about the moment we got in. How fortunate you are that so many beautiful girls have come of age this season.”
    And this “putting it about,” as his mother put it, very likely explained Philippa and the insult to his cheek. News of that sort would spread like cholera in London.
    Jonathan took this in, nodding, and eyed his fork speculatively. He had two options, as he saw it: He could drive it into his own heart. Or he could hurl it straight into the tiny black heart of his father. Perhaps his aptitude for darts was all in preparation for this moment.
    He met Isaiah’s eyes. His father was smiling blandly and indulgently.
    No, his heart is too small and shriveled of a target, even for a marksman like me, Jonathan decided blackly.
    It was true, however, that beautiful girls did abound this season. But beautiful girls were like flowers; he was quite certain he enjoyed them so thoroughly because he wasn’t the one responsible for watering and tending and keeping them alive and happy, and listening to them discuss liver complaints.
    There were also going to be a few other beautiful girls, some of them the sort who would never be invited to the balls he attended, who could potentially hurl things at him, sob, or orate about how he had allegedly wronged them. He hadn’t a permanent mistress. But a few had . . . auditioned . . . for the role, so to speak. Including Philippa.
    God. London, his favorite place, was going to be a veritable gauntlet for the next several weeks.
    The walls of the dining room suddenly seemed to be closing in on him.
    He wasn’t a heartbreaker. Or rather, he never set out to do it. He could never understand how women did it so freely, offered hearts without telling a man they were doing it, and then accused a man of stomping on a gift he hadn’t known he’d possessed. Didn’t they know what a dangerous business love was? How reckless it was to fall in? Falling in love alone was proof of insanity.
    His last few bites of lamb chop tasted of sawdust. He swallowed them, finished his wine, and pushed himself away from the table.
    “Well, I’m off to fashion a noose,” he said grimly, by way of excusing himself.
    “Ha ha!” His mother laughed indulgently.
    His father simply smiled generally. Very