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LENGTH: Mid Novel Borderline Full Novel
SENSUALITY: Spicy/Carnal

Cover art (c) Eliza Black 2005
Trade Paperback ISBN 1-58608-748-7
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She walks in beauty like the night…

The Earl of Hardcastle is used to living his life shrouded in darkness, preferring to spend his days and nights in his gloomy townhouse than amongst the glittering ton in order to shield himself from a shameful secret he keeps carefully hidden. But his way of life is suddenly threatened when he finds himself longing for, and fantasizing about, Madeline Brydges, Society's resident do-gooder.

Love will find a way where wolves fear to prey…

Madeline Brydges needs to get married, and she has her sights set on the handsome and mysterious Earl of Hardcastle. But the elusive earl is proving most difficult where marriage is concerned. After years of saving those in need, Madeline is able to spot the signs, and she sees that inside Hardcastle lurks a painful secret. Madeline must risk all if she is to save the man she loves from his demons.

MISTRESS OF THE NIGHT

By

Charlotte Featherstone

© copyright September 2005, Charlotte Featherstone
Cover art by Eliza Black, © copyright September 2005
ISBN 1-58608-754-1
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author's imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Prologue

Ashbourne, Derbyshire,
1781

"Damn you, Catherine, push!"

"I can't," the exhausted woman wailed as another contraction seized her body.

"My lady, you must push. The babe is almost out, ye've only the head to deliver."

Cracking open the door to her stepmother's chamber, eight-year-old Celeste gasped at the sight before her. Two midwives were standing at the end of the bed, one holding Catherine's thighs apart, the other lifting and twisting the legs of the babe. Her father was standing to the side of the bed, his meaty fists planted on his hips.

"Catherine, that's my heir. Push, damn you!"

Catherine squealed with pain as the midwife inserted her beefy hand and attempted to deliver the babe's head.

"Out of my way," her father roared, shouldering the midwife away from Catherine's legs. "I'm not just going to stand by and watch my heir die because of incompetent females."

"My lord," Mrs. Noland, pleaded. "You canna just tear the babe from her. Babe's that come breech need a special way of deliverin'. You have to have a care. The child!" Mrs. Noland cried as he gruffly took the babe's legs in his hands and twisted.

"Push, damn you," he snarled, lifting the babe's legs high in the air so that she could see the purple, mottled toes curled tight. "And don't you dare defy me, Catherine."

Her stepmother let out a blood-curdling scream and with a savage grunt, her father pulled a silent and bloodied limp babe from Catherine's womb.

The room was quiet except for the tapping of blood as it rolled off the foot of the bed and splashed with an eerie, rhythmic patter onto the floorboards below. Celeste looked up from the widening maroon puddle to the still and silent form of her brother. Her father, his face ruddy and blotched, swore and started shaking the babe, commanding him to cry, to breathe, to do something.

And then he did, a weak gasp, soon replaced by a wet gurgling sound that resonated deep in his tiny lungs. He struggled to breathe, the moist, raking breaths echoed throughout the room, and Celeste stood frozen--stricken, hoping the babe would prevail. And then he suddenly drew up his legs and flailed his arms out wide and let out a loud, impassioned roar that made her stepmother begin to weep.

"Ladies," her father bellowed, holding her newborn brother high in the air for all to see. "I give you my heir. The future Earl of Hardcastle."

Chapter One

London
May, 1814

He'd been the object of her desires for months. Madeline Brydges, the daughter of the Earl of Penrick, stole another glimpse at the man who had occupied her every waking thought and she admitted, filled her nights with passionate dreams.

"He's going to catch you staring, you know," her friend, Harriett Longbottom murmured beside her.

"No, he won't," Madeline whispered, careful to keep her glances casual and short and seemingly uninterested.

It wouldn't do to attract the attention of the Tabbies. They were always a threat, always milling around, searching for juicy tidbits to gossip about. And her staring at the Earl of Hardcastle would be fodder for the gossip mill. The tale would no doubt spread through Lady Carmichael's fashionable ballroom like fire through a barn.

"He's too dark and brooding," Penelope Mills moaned.

"He's mysterious," Madeline replied, glancing once more at the tall man with black curls. Not curls, really, more like waves. Thick, silky waves that she'd dreamed of touching.

"He's aloof," Harriett warned.

"Merely misunderstood, Harry."

"He's rude," Penelope snorted, "and if you think the way he cut Mary Anne Hastings the other night at the Faversham rout is misunderstood, you've gone daft."

"Mary Anne was chasing after him as if she were a queen bee and he was a pot of honey."

"He's insufferable."

"He won't do," Penelope added, flicking open her fan. "Find someone more malleable, someone you can make dance to your tune."

Madeline watched as he stood solemnly, his shoulders resting against the wall of the ballroom. He was tall, almost as tall as his friend, Bathurst, who stood alongside him, but not nearly as big. While Bathurst was broad and heavily muscled, the earl was lithe and sleek, like a full blooded stallion. Proud, regal, and immensely masculine. "

"Madeline," Harriett sighed, "what can you be thinking? Hardcastle isn't husband material. Penelope is right, the earl's a brutish oaf who only looks at women so he may cut them to the quick with his razor edged tongue and icy glares. He'll rip you to shreds within three minutes, and enjoy doing so."

"He won't."

"He will," came the unified voices of her friends.

"He's worth the risk, I think."

"He'll be a challenge," Harriett whispered, peering through the crowd in order to glimpse him. "There's no doubt about that."

Madeline studied the earl from her vantage point across the room. He was surrounded, as always, by his friends, Lords Bathurst and Reanleigh, and their wives. "When have I ever backed down from a challenge?" Madeline asked, watching as the earl's face pulled into a look of pained boredom.

"That's what scares us, you never back down, not even when it's dangerous to keep going. As your friends we really cannot allow you to do something as rash as this. You simply cannot set your cap for the Earl of Hardcastle," Harry lectured.

"I don't see why not," Madeline said peevishly. Really, she was very disappointed in Harry and Penelope. When she had confided in them that she'd chosen her potential husband she had expected enthusiasm, not criticism.

"I don't see the earl making you an agreeable husband," Harry grumbled.

"Let me be the judge," Madeline said, plopping her empty champagne flute on a passing tray. The earl would do, he had to do. Her father had all but blackmailed her into finding herself a husband. If she didn't find a suitable mate by the end of the season, her father was cutting off all support to her beloved Montgomery House. And there was no way in the world she was going to give up her life's work. Those women needed her as much as she needed them and she wouldn't, absolutely couldn't, let something like finding a husband get in the way of the house. If her father wanted her to wed, so be it. But there was only one man for her, and she would settle for no other. She wanted a marriage filled with love and children and she was certain the Earl of Hardcastle would provide her with both. She had an uncanny ability to read people, and she had read Hardcastle perfectly--he was in need of love and affection.

* * * *

"She's lovely."

Blaine nodded his agreement, careful not to move his eyes an inch. "She's turned out well. She was rather nervous, but I do believe she's settled in."

"I'm not speaking of your niece, Hardcastle," Bathurst mumbled. "I'm referring to the young lady you've been staring at all evening."

"I don't know what you mean." Blaine appeared as though he were bored with the conversation when all he really felt was shock at being discovered watching the woman who was quickly becoming a fixation with him.

"You've been all but devouring her since the moment you spotted her, which was at least," Bathurst removed his pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket, and checked the time, "an hour ago."

"You're mad," Blaine scoffed, feeling the faint flush of heat in his cheeks. "I'm keeping an eye on Miranda, nothing more."

"If you were watching Miranda," his friend, Reanleigh drawled, "you would see that she's dancing with Ashton, the most notorious youngblood of the season."

"I am watching Miranda." He forced his eyes from the fetching woman by the buffet table, only to have them land on his young niece and a most unsuitable suitor. "The pair of you act as though I were a moonstruck twit pining after the chambermaid."

"Not pining," Bathurst laughed, "devouring."

"I most certainly was not devouring Madeline Brydges. The very thought is preposterous."

"Ah," Bathurst chuckled. "That's the lovely's name, is it?"

"So you were," Reanleigh teased. "'Bout time you took a fancy to someone. It's past time you started thinking about a wife and a family. 'Tis time you saw to the Hardcastle dynasty. You've been holed up in that cave for too long."

"It's not a bloody cave," Blaine said through set teeth, "and I prefer it to mundane society, of which I'm very quickly associating with your company. And furthermore, I'll have you know marriage and brats are the last thing on my mind." He inclined his head, abruptly putting an end to the unwanted conversation. "If you will both excuse me, I need to have a word with my niece."

"By all means," Reanleigh smirked.

"Make sure you pass by the buffet table." Bathurst motioned to the horde of people clamoring for a plate. "With such a crush, there's a good chance you'll get to rub up against her."

"I do not rub," Blaine grimaced, disgusted with his friends and their ribbing. "I consider myself a gentleman. As such, I do not graze, brush, side along or do anything else to a lady, much less rub up against her in a ballroom."

"Being a gentleman is over-rated."

"Yeah," Reanleigh drawled, finishing his champagne in one swallow, "and it doesn't get you the girl, either."

Shaking his head, he left his friends and wondered, not for the first time, how he had let Celeste talk him into chaperoning his niece for her first season. He must truly be mad to think he could pull off such a stunt. It was absolutely ludicrous to believe that he of all people, the social misfit of the ton, could parade around, acting as though he fit in, when in fact he knew he stood out like a sore, reddened thumb.

Sighing, Blaine made his way to where Lord Ashton was preparing to depart from his niece. If only Celeste hadn't cried, if only she hadn't flung herself into his arms, sobbing, grieving for the husband she had loved and lost, hurting over the pain of raising her family on her own.

If there was one person on this earth he truly loved, it was his sister--his half-sister, he corrected. He had never been able to stand idly by and watch her cry. He'd always been affected and last week had been no exception. In fact, he'd been so damned moved that he'd agreed to the plan before he could even think of the pitfalls. And there were, he thought nervously, many pitfalls.

Seeing Ashton leave Miranda at Lady Brookehaven's side, Blaine charged straight ahead, glad at least that his niece was amongst friends. The Dowager Dragon, as he and his cronies had so uproariously named her when they were boys, was his friend Bronley's grandmother and a great asset to him in launching Miranda in the social whirl. While his sister was clearly out of mourning for her husband, Celeste was still prone to fits of crying and melancholy, leaving him and the dowager to see his niece through her first season.

"Hardcastle." The dowager glared at him, her wrinkled hand curling about the head of her walking stick. "I expect you'll have a discussion with Miranda, here, about agreeing to dance with young men of questionable character."

"Indeed, your ladyship." He nodded politely as he reached for Miranda's arm. "Come along, my dear."

"And Hardcastle," the dowager said, leaning close to him, so close in fact, he had to bend to hear her. "I would have a care the next time I took a notion to study a member of the opposite sex. It was most apparent, even from this distance and with my poor eyesight."

"As always, Lady Brookehaven, you are a font of indispensable advice."

"I do try, Harcastle," she laughed, her hazel eyes dancing mischievously in the candlelight. "One must always stick to one's duties."

Yes, Blaine thought as he steered his niece off the dance floor, the dowager was forever discharging her duties. Her damnable nose was always in someone's business. She knew everything about everyone in Society, and he might have thought that vastly amusing, or perhaps reassuring where Miranda was concerned, but instead it raised his hackles, made him nervous that perhaps the dowager knew everything about him, too.

"I can't believe you're dragging me off like a prehistoric cave dweller."

Blaine gritted his teeth and increased his pressure around Miranda's elbow. "I'm not dragging, merely steering."

"Oh?" she said mockingly, her full lips turned down into a pout, "so now I'm being treated as if I were a horse."

"If you do not cease this silly behavior at once, I'll do more than guide you. I will have no qualms about pulling you by the wrists, kicking and screaming and causing every possible ruckus so that every damn person present will stop what they are doing and gape at the spectacle you're making."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Try me."

"Where are we going?" she whined. "Why can't we just go outside where no one will hear you yelling?"

"I do not yell, Miranda. You know that."

But, that did bring him to an interesting dilemma. Just where the devil was he going to take her? Blaine knew without a doubt that if he snuck her away some place private he'd only arouse curiosity. The Beau Monde would no doubt put two and two together and decide he was lecturing her about dancing with Ashton. And the last he thing he wanted was for the ton to always be watching his niece, waiting to see if she would defy him, which she would no doubt do as soon as he turned his back.

Looking about the crowded ballroom he settled his gaze upon the buffet table. He knew for certain Bathurst and Reanleigh would be watching him, waiting to see if he would rub against Lady Madeline.

He supposed he could return to the dance floor. It might not hurt to lead her out, act as though naught was amiss, assure the ton his niece was the model of decorum and a paragon of female virtue. He snuck a glance at the still simpering and pouting Miranda.

Ever since her father had died, Miranda had become a stranger to him. She'd turned into a tempestuous, smart-mouthed creature who delighted in giving her mother crying jags, and himself fits of apoplexy. It wasn't like Miranda to be so petulant. He knew it had to do with missing her father, and yet, he couldn't stand to sit back and watch her ruin her life. He didn't want that--he knew all too well what it was like to feel like an outcast. To feel different. To be lonely.

"Well?" Miranda said waspishly.

"You will walk to the buffet with me and you will be polite and smile. I will tolerate nothing less, do you hear me?"

"Fine," she bit out, stomping beside him. "But I'm not eating anything. I've all but lost my appetite."

"Do you know, my dear, I think I should let Ashton court you. Why, I wager one week spent in your company will be enough to cure him of his evil propensities."

"I cannot believe you said that."

"Believe it, Miranda. My tongue can be just as forked and poisonous as yours. Whomever did you think you inherited the talent from?"

Her look of pure astonishment amused him, it almost made his dangerous exposure to the seeing eyes of the Beau Monde worth it. Almost, but not quite.