Night of Pleasure Read Online Free Page A

door.
    A somber Mr. Grey emerged followed by his mother.
    Lady Banfield’s dark eyes solemnly darted over to Derek. She lingered, her hands clutching the sides of her indigo morning gown. Her pale face was mournful and her usually playful eyes were faded, the rims swollen and red from tears. All those brown, stiffly pinned curls that were routinely immaculate were frayed and lopsided, making her look much older than her seven and thirty years.
    He stiffened. “Mother? Is Father—”
    “He wishes to speak to you, Derek,” she offered in a strained tone. “I have been advised by his doctor to call for a priest. Be prepared, my darling. Your father is having difficulty breathing and may not last beyond the night.”
    Derek stared, listening to his mother’s words that made absolutely no sense. The longer he stared and tried to focus, the louder her words echoed in his own head. His father wouldn’t last the night and was DYING . Everything momentarily blurred. He turned his gaze to the staggered gilded paintings of his ancestors and their calm, refined faces that lined the walls of the corridor. They seemed to smear. Mocking him.
    “Quickly,” his mother prodded. “He is waiting.”
    The doctors had to be wrong. They had to be. “What about Andrew?” he whispered.
    His mother’s voice softened. “You’re the heir to the estate, Derek. Andrew will see him once all matters of the estate have been addressed. Now please. His strength isn’t what it should be.” She gestured toward the open door. “Go to him and close the door.”
    This wasn’t real. His father must have been misdiagnosed.
    Hurrying past his mother, Derek jogged to the open door where Mr. Grey still lingered. The choking stench of vomit, urine and mulled wine pierced his nostrils. Derek almost retched but forced himself to breathe in and out of his mouth to control it. Edging into the darkened room lit by lamps and candles, he closed the door.
    The heavy curtains had been tightly drawn over the windows facing out to the garden.
    Sparse light and dark shadows shifted across the massive four-poster bed displaying a grim, gaunt, sweat-ridden figure propped against a wall of pillows. His father stared out at him with hollow, dark eyes, looking nothing like the strapping, jolly, and boisterous man Derek had last seen during Christmas and Twelfth Night holiday.
    This was not his father. It was the ghost of what had been. Derek couldn’t breathe. This was not recent. It had all been happening while they were away at school. His mother was either cruel or deeply misguided to have kept his father’s illness a secret this long. Especially after countless years of calling in doctors when he wasn’t ill at all.
    Viscount Banfield, whose exposed arm was bandaged from bloodletting, weakly patted the space beside him with a pale hand. The lace-edged linen of his nightshirt fluttered with the movement. “Closer.” His chest heaved. “We…we mustn’t waste time.”
    Derek hurried past their family doctor, Mr. Shire, who folded a damp towel over a small handled porcelain bowl filled with fresh blood. Mr. Shire set the bleeding bowl onto a sideboard, wiped both hands onto a crimson-spattered apron and proceeded to gather various glass bottles of tonic which he organized back into his portable medicine chest.
    Lingering beside the bed, Derek lowered his gaze to his father’s veined hands that trembled as they unsuccessfully attempted to grasp the linen. His father, a fit, well-muscled man of four and forty, who only a few months earlier had been dancing, boasting and riding, couldn’t even grasp the linens.
    Glancing at the doctor, Derek choked out, “Isn’t there any other medicine you can give him? There must be something more you can do.”
    Mr. Shire paused from fastening the medicine chest, his grey bushy brows coming together above his gold-rimmed spectacles. “I have done everything within my means.”
    Derek glared. “No. You haven’t, sir. If