The Countess Page 0,12

to sail to America to hunt for you."

Richard nodded silently, not taking his eyes off the blonde across the bal room.

She hadn't moved but stil stood, face pale and eyes and mouth round with horror, staring at him as if he were the devil himself.

"What do we do now?" Daniel asked grimly. "You can't confront George for the greedy, murderous, bastard of an imposter he is if he isn't here."

Richard frowned as he realized the truth to those words.

"Worse yet," Daniel continued. "You'l have completely lost the advantage of surprise once he hears you were here at the bal . He'l know you're alive and take measures to try to stop you from taking back everything he stole. He - Where are you going? Richard?"

Richard was now crossing the bal room to approach his "wife," detouring only to col ect a healthy glass of whiskey along the way. The depth of the woman's horror, and the fact that she couldn't seem to snap out of it, suggested to him that more was amiss here than even he knew about, and he wanted to know it al . Knowledge could be a deadly weapon in the right hands and Richard intended it to be in his.

"Why Christiana, I thought you said Dicky was sick," one of the older women tril ed as he reached the group.

"He looks hail and healthy to me," the woman beside her said firmly, eyeing him with suspicion. No doubt because Christiana, as the woman had cal ed her, was stil gaping at him like a fish out of water.

Richard took a moment to glance at the gaggle of women about them, his look enough to make every last one of them mutter about seeking out refreshments or friends and move away. Once left alone, Richard turned back to Christiana. Her eyes had grown wider as he approached. Unattractively so, he decided as he took in the way they almost bulged out of her head, and the woman appeared to have lost her powers of speech. She simply stood staring at him looking so pale he feared her fainting or simply dropping dead on the spot.

Frowning, he held out the glass of whiskey. "You look quite overset, my lady. This should help you regain some color."

He expected her to take a mere sip of the potent liquid so was rather startled when she took the glass he offered and tossed it back as if it were water. It certainly did the trick, however, just more so than he'd hoped. Her pal or washed away under a sudden rush of red that was real y no more attractive than the pal or had been, and she gasped as if her breath had been taken with the pal or.

She then bent forward hacking and coughing in a most violent manner.

Grimacing, Richard took the now empty glass with one hand and patted her back with the other. "I suppose I should have warned you to sip it."

Either the words or the sound of his voice brought her upright and she suddenly shrank back from his touch as if he were some unclean beast.

"You're alive," she gasped, and the whiskey's rasp in her voice did not hide her displeasure at the fact. It seemed obvious the woman knew of her husband's perfidy. Richard didn't know why but he'd assumed that she would have been innocent in al this. However, it appeared she was aware of the fact that George, his younger twin by several minutes, had hired men to kil him in a bid to steal his identity, title and wealth. She obviously was not pleased to learn it had failed. For some reason the knowledge that the woman had known about it disappointed him.

"You could at least try to hide your horror at knowing I yet live," Richard said coldly. "It wil hardly do your case much good to show so openly how little my survival pleases you."

"I - no, I - you - " she struggled briefly, and then took a deep breath and said, "It is a bit of a surprise, my lord. We were sure you were dead when we left the house tonight. You were so stil and cold in the bed . . ."

Richard felt his eyebrows rise on his forehead as he realized that she couldn't be talking about him. He had been nowhere near this woman earlier tonight. It couldn't be he who had been stil and cold in a bed. Was George