Read Online Midnight Star by Catherine Coulter - Free Book Online Page A

lawyer.” Delaney laid down the letter and gazed into the empty grate of the fireplace. No, he hadn’t been informed by Paul Montgomery, Sir Alec’s solicitor in London. Every month he sent a bank draft to Montgomery, quite large amounts, for the mine had proved a true find, as Delaney had known it would. Why hadn’t Montgomery written to him? Perhaps he had, Delaney thought, remembering his comment to Lucas about the chancy mail system. Hadn’t Sir Alec had a daughter? WasMontgomery simply giving her the money now? Still, he should have notified me, Delaney thought, slowly rising from the chair. He had heard about his own solicitor’s death, which had occurred before Sir Alec’s. He didn’t like coincidences.
    As he bathed and changed into a frilled white shirt and a black frock coat, he mentally composed the letter he would write to Paul Montgomery. He was somewhat distracted when he greeted Penelope and her mother some thirty minutes later in what Mrs. Stevenson persisted in calling his drawing room.
    “My dear Mr. Saxton, how delightful to see you again! Penelope has missed you sorely, sir! How nice of you to invite us for tea.”
    The woman was as loud and vulgar as her husband, but Delaney’s smile never faltered. “My pleasure, ma’am. Penelope, you are looking lovely, as usual.”
    He took her small slender hand and raised it to his lips. He could see her preening at his courtly gesture. “Won’t you ladies please be seated? Lucas, you may serve the tea and cakes.”
    Mrs. Agatha Stevenson was large-boned, her bosom overpowering. She persisted in wearing the most youthful of French fashions, gowns of daring colors decorated with quantities of ribbons and furbelows. Delaney silently hoped that the chair she chose would crack under her weight. How she and her equally large and clumsy husband had produced such a slender daughter was beyond him.
    “English tea,” Mrs. Stevenson said complacently, adjusting her bulk in the creaking chair.“Did you not tell us once, Mr. Saxton, that you were in England several years ago?”
    “Oh yes, Del, do tell us about it,” said Penelope, her brown eyes wide with interest. “How I should love to go there.”
    “First the tea, ladies,” Delaney said, signaling to the expressionless Lucas to wheel the cart to Mrs. Stevenson. “The cakes,” he added blandly, “are Lin Chou’s creation. I trust you will find them as delicious as I do.”
    “It could not be otherwise!”
    “They look marvelous, Del!”
    Delaney almost grinned when Mrs. Stevenson bit into the rice cake. Her jowls quivered, but of course she could say nothing now. Lin’s rice cakes, flat and delicately browned, were more decorative than edible.
    Why not impress the hell out of them? he thought, and with a nonchalant air said, “I returned to London in the company of my brother’s mother- and father-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Graffton.”
    “Oh,” Penelope said, sitting forward in her chair. “Royalty!”
    “Not quite, Penelope,” he said blandly. “In any case, I spent an enjoyable several months in London, and managed at the same time to conduct a goodly amount of business.” With Sir Alec FitzHugh, among others, who is now dead.
    “Oh, Del, do tell me about the Tower of London,” Penelope said in her breathless high voice. “Is there still blood about from all the people beheaded there?”
    “No blood. The English are quite fastidious about things like that, you know.” It was Montgomerywho pressed for Sir Alec to invest. Why didn’t the man write to me of Sir Alec’s death?
    Delaney felt a veil of boredom begin to descend. Surely teatime in England never lasted so bloody long! Did he really want to marry a chit who was only eighteen years old, and as empty-headed as a gourd? “Jesus,” he muttered.
    “What did you say, Del? . . . Nothing? Well, let me tell you our news. Mama is giving a formal ball in three weeks and everyone will come! We’re all going to wear