Read Online The Temptation of the Night Jasmine by Lauren Willig - Free Book Online Page B

the duke’s death. The loud and constant rows between the dowager duchess and his father certainly couldn’t have done anything to improve the duke’s condition. As to whether his father had done anything else to speed along the duke’s demise … he would never know for sure.
    Charlotte’s eyes searched his face. Whatever she saw there made her brow wrinkle with concern. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think that I don’t want you here. I’d rather have you here than neither of you.’ She bit her lip in frustration. ‘Oh, dear. That came out wrong somehow.’
    ‘No,’ said Robert simply. ‘It didn’t. It came out just right.’
    Charlotte didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy trying to make him feel better. ‘You were so good to me in that awful time,’ she said earnestly. ‘I missed you terribly when you left.’
    She had been very easy to be good to. It had been an undemanding way of assuaging his own conscience, taking the time to pay attention to a neglected little girl six years his junior. If he were being honest with himself, it had been as much to distract himself as her, an excuse for staying out of the way of their brawling elders. At least dancing attendance on her had never been dull; she played elaborate games of make-believe, spinning fanciful stories in which he sometimes participated and sometimes just watched.
    Robert smiled at the sudden recollection of one of those fancies. ‘Do you still believe in unicorns?’
    Charlotte’s cheeks flared with colour. ‘I can’t believe you remember that after all these years!’
    He hadn’t, until now. ‘How could I forget? It’s not everyone who goes unicorn hunting with a plate of jam tarts.’
    ‘I thought it might be hungry,’ protested Charlotte. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
    ‘It was.’ Robert smiled reminiscently. ‘Those were excellent tarts.’
    ‘You told me the unicorn had come for them!’
    ‘I didn’t want you to be disappointed.’
    Charlotte folded her arms across her chest, trapping her book in front of her breasts. ‘You mean you liked raspberry tarts.’
    ‘That, too.’ Robert grinned down at her, watching as she struggled to keep up her air of mock reproof and failed miserably. He was surprised to hear himself saying, ‘Perhaps we should go unicorn hunting again sometime.’
    Charlotte beamed at him. ‘Only if you leave some of the tarts for me this time.’
    ‘We’ll have the kitchen make up a double batch.’
    ‘Triple,’ corrected Charlotte. ‘We’ll want some for the unicorn.’
    Looking down at her shining face, her hair glinting like a personal halo in the light of the setting sun, Robert could almost believe she might find her unicorn, somewhere out in the gardens of Girdings House. In the army, overseas, he would have scoffed at the notion that such radical innocence could still exist, even tucked away in the remote corners of an English country house. It was a bit like stumbling upon a unicorn, or some other creature generally believed extinct.
    Reaching forward, Robert tucked one of her flyaway curls back behind her ear. ‘You look like a lady in a medieval tapestry. All you need is the unicorn at your feet.’
    ‘And one of those big, conical hats,’ suggested Charlotte, tilting her head in a way that he remembered from all those years ago. ‘I believe those are de rigueur for unicorn-hunting maidens.’
    ‘We’ll have to find you one,’ said Robert. ‘There must be one somewhere in this great pile.’
    Clasping his hands behind his back, he glanced around the gallery. Great pile didn’t even begin to describe it. The sheer vastness of Girdings House resisted comprehension. Forget conical hats – one could store a whole regiment away in a corner of one wing and never even know they were there.
    Robert was startled out of his thoughts by the tentative touch of a hand against his arm.
    He looked down to Charlotte regarding him earnestly, her book tucked under one arm.
    ‘I