The Girl is Not For Christmas - Emma V Leech Page 0,5
for her. Yet we must share our meagre Christmas luxuries with a man who’ll just turn around and destroy himself all over again.”
Livvy turned on her heel, trying not to let the stricken look in her brother’s eye make guilt stab in her heart as if it had been pierced with a blade. When had she become so cruel, so callous? She had never been one to see a fellow creature suffer, never been one to stint on charity. Yet the past years had hardened her, dried her up into the desiccated old spinster she was destined to become.
Only four and twenty, she reminded herself as a panicky sensation rose in her chest. Only four and twenty. Not old, not so old, not yet. It didn’t matter. She may as well be ninety-four. She was trapped here, beloved auntie to her nieces and nephews, skivvy to her kind-hearted, ridiculous brother and his feckless wife, and there was no escape.
King lurched in and out of consciousness, unable to tell which was which. His dreams were lavish nightmares, scenes of debauchery in a fiery landscape where brimstone singed the colourful gowns of beautiful women. Except they weren’t women at all, but devils in disguise, demons waiting to devour the next lustful man who turned his attention their way. There were pitchers filled with wine that turned to thick, bubbling black tar if he tried to drink and burned and burned, searing him from the inside until his lungs blistered and his stomach roasted from within. Occasionally he woke, or thought he did, to a simple bedroom with whitewashed walls and fire that burned in the hearth. For a little while happiness would fill him up, tears stinging his eyes at the relief of discovering himself still alive, still in the world after his brush with hell. The linen sheets were worn smooth and soft, and smelled faintly of lavender… but then he’d see it sitting in the corner, a deformed, gnarled devil grinning at him, drawing back thin black lips, wrinkling skin like an alligator to bare rows and rows of dagger-like teeth as it laughed and laughed.
“Please,” he begged, shaking his head. “Please, no… no….”
It seemed that Livvy was not quite as cruel as she’d believed herself to be, as the Earl of Kingston suffered through a third day of bone-racking shaking and sweating and whatever it was that terrified him so he wept like a little boy. She stayed with him through it, wiping his brow and murmuring reassuring words, holding his hand when he was so terribly afraid.
He was a handsome devil, she’d give him that. Even with his skin the colour of rancid milk, his dark hair plastered to his face with sweat, and the stench of sickness clinging to him, he was beautiful. It was a dark, harsh kind of beauty, like the Cornish coast that sparkled like a sapphire on a clear day and would wreck an unwary ship with ease if it got too close. Finding safe harbour in those strong arms was an illusion though, and she wondered how many foolish young ladies he’d ruined. Just as well she was past the age where she believed a man could change his character. A good-natured fool would ever be thus, and a rogue would be nothing more. Pretty he might be, but the Earl of Kingston had the morals of a tom cat and, if he was suffering now, it was no more than he deserved.
Still, she was not vindictive, despite her earlier harshness to her brother, so here she sat by the fiend’s bedside again, attempting to spoon a little chicken broth down his throat. He coughed and spluttered, but managed a few spoonfuls, though some dribbled down his chin. Livvy reached for the napkin in her lap and dabbed it away, then yelped as a hand as strong as a vice clamped about her wrist. Her gaze flew to his, and she gasped. His eyes were dark, so dark they were almost black and burning with intensity.
“Who are you? Are you another devil?” he growled.
“L-Livvy,” she stammered, immediately furious with herself. Why on earth had she given her first name, her pet name? She straightened her spine, meeting his gaze and firming her tone. “I am Miss Olivia Penrose. Sister to Lord Boscawen. You’re in our home, my lord.”
For a moment he just stared at her, then he looked so bewildered she almost laughed.
“Y-You’re… you’re real?” he asked, his voice raspy and cracked.