Free Mistress by Midnight by Maggie Robinson

live chickens to exquisite silver that he’d described so vividly. James was not much more than five or six when Con had written the letter.
    But Con could almost taste the strong bitter coffee he had shared with his traveling companions, or hear the mournful call to prayer at the Great Mosque. In his mind’s eye he saw the blue-and-white hillside houses of Sidi Bou Said perched over the Gulf of Tunis outside the city. The shore had reminded him of the water that surrounded his own island and connected him to so many different countries. These reflections would be meaningless for James even now. But surely his son would be interested in the exploits of the Phoenicians, and Dido, and Hannibal as he invaded Italy with his elephants, so Con set to describing Carthage and inserting a bit of a history lesson in his manuscript. After some consideration, he decided it would be ghoulish to mention the hundreds of graves where small children had been sacrificed to the gods and then buried. That horror would be best left to the real history books.
    Con worked late into the night, pausing only to toss morefuel into the fire. When his hand was tired and his mind empty, he put himself to bed. He’d try his luck with Laurette again tomorrow. He was probably the only man in London who kept a mistress for her own pleasure, not his. But like his memoirs for James, the little house was a temple to his love for Laurette, and it was just the beginning.

Chapter 6

    L aurette heard the front door close and shot out of bed. Con had
left
her? She gazed down at her flushed freckled body, then went to the dresser. Martine had reluctantly folded Laurette’s ancient nightgown amongst the newer fripperies. Laurette pulled it over her head and paced her room. Con had
left
her, left her with an aching inside so deep even he would not be able to fill it. It wasn’t just his body she craved, but the friendship they’d shared so long ago.
    But they were different people now. He’d had experiences that were completely alien to her. Laurette imagined him a pasha indolently sprawled on pillows, surrounded by skilled seductresses who fulfilled his every erotic need.
    She would never sleep tonight; she was too enervated. Con had brought her to intense orgasm as she stood pliant to his probing tongue and fingers. She had wanted more. Last night had been a revelation—she was still a woman and Con was still the man who completed her.
    Laurette wanted to slap some sense into her idiotically romantic head. What rubbish. She was independent, had been even when her poor parents were alive. She knew how to take care of herself. With Sadie’s help, of course. They had made a quiet and satisfying life in Lower Conover, raising vegetables and ornery chickens, doing what they could for their neighbors. Laurette had found a vocation replacing theTrumbull sisters, her parlor filled in the afternoons with village girls looking to improve their education. Her teaching methods were unorthodox but reasonably successful. And in each grubby little face she looked for a glimpse of what her daughter might be like, off in her fancy school.
    Laurette sighed. She would write to Beatrix tonight, and James, too. She’d somehow explain her temporary new address. She was less than twenty-five miles from Eton College now—perhaps she could arrange a day to see James. She’d got just a glimpse of him in December, when Con was doing his damnedest to be Father Christmas and Lord Bountiful wrapped in one. It wasn’t presents James needed from his father, and someday Laurette would tell Con so.
    He seemed unaware that Laurette even knew James. And what would he say if she told him his wife had been her best friend?
    She would not have believed such a thing possible twelve years ago.
    On first meeting, Marianna reminded Laurette of an expensive porcelain doll, but there was something about her which looked sturdy, unbreakable. She would not break easily. A woman of lesser strength