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

clear amusement. “What do you want the duke to invest in, Mr. Redmond?”
    “A business venture.” he said shortly. He turned back to her. “Why? Do you have a great superfluous pile of money you wish to invest, too, Miss de Ballesteros?”
    That was pointed. Wicked, wicked man. He was far too astute for his—and her—own good. Her incriminating sorry little bloodied handkerchief remained bunched in his fist. Still, there wasn’t a shred of accusation in what he said.
    “I’m interested in the art of making money.” This much was true.
    “Isn’t that a coincidence,” he drawled. “Something else we have in common. That, and our hobby of stalking the Duke of Greyfolk.”
    She laughed.
    His face lit then, as if her laughter was a prize he’d won. But she could feel a restlessness setting in; her native caution was reviving, coiling in her like a spring. She really ought to put a halt to this conversation. It was far too honest and dangerously comfortable.
    She tensed to move.
    And yet she couldn’t seem to do it while Jonathan’s face was still faintly lit. He suddenly glanced toward her feet. “You just dropped something. Something red?”
    Her medal!
    She lunged to snatch it up just as he bent to retrieve it.
    And now her heart was pounding.
    He stared at her again, a faint frown between his eyes.
    “Ho! Redmond! ” A cheerful masculine voice rose out of the dwindling crowd.
    Jonathan pivoted reflexively toward it.
    And Tommy, who was astute at seizing the perfect opportunity to appear and disappear, slipped away as swiftly as that street urchin had snatched an apple.

Chapter 6

    T HE NEXT MORNING J ONATHAN tossed a coin to decide whether to first go to Klaus, break the news about his failure to gain capital, watch his sunny hopeful face fall, and withstand a shower of emotional German, or whether he ought to spend the afternoon saving Argosy from himself.
    He knew no particular joy when Argosy won the toss.
    For Argosy dipped freely into the seemingly endless vats of his father’s wealth and was allegedly given leave to marry whomever he pleased; he wished he’d gone straight to Klaus. Then again, he would likely find little comfort anywhere in London, given the sword of Damocles currently dangling over his head.
    And yet when Jonathan and Argosy entered a room together, women tended to flock to the two of them like migrating geese. Argosy was fair, chiseled, handsome in a way that only generations of beautiful people mating with generations of other beautiful people could produce—and was heir to a viscount. He’d perfected the art of ennui, such that women yearned to be the one who finally made him come alive with passion, and would go to considerably risky erotic lengths to do so, which Argosy never discouraged. Given the company you keep, Tommy had said outside the Duke of Greyfolk’s house, and doubtless Argosy was precisely whom she’d meant.
    And Tommy was the object of Argosy’s current inappropriate obsession.
    A year ago the Countess of Mirabeau had decided she was lonely, and instead of calling upon people or holding dinner parties, which is what most sane aristocrats would have done, she’d begun inviting people who amused her to wait upon her—a poet she’d admired, or a painter who amused her, a renowned thinker or two (although the true thinkers soon tired of milling about in the salon talking to poets), the daughter of a renowned former courtesan (that would be Tommy), and soon enough her events became fashionable. Which meant all the youngbloods investigated.
    And when they met Tommy, they returned again and again. And brought better liquor with them, since the countess had a grand title but a modest and dwindling fortune.
    And thus was born the weekly salon.
    That was the other reason Jonathan wasn’t eager to attend the salon today; Tommy might be intriguing enough, but he knew her for what she was: trouble.
    Baritone voices and soft feminine laughter mingled. A poet who