The Devil in Her Bed (Devil You Know #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,6

hold tightened. “Perhaps you did not.” A soft wind picked through the trees as gently as a tentative doe before picking up speed. The air smelled of decisions and destiny.

“Perhaps … Pippa Hargrave perished with her parents in the flames, and only Francesca survived. The heir to the Cavendish title and fortune. The one who can escape this tragedy with enough fortune to do something about it.”

Pippa strained to turn and look at Serana, wondering if she’d heard the woman correctly. “I am nothing like Francesca. She was … delicate.”

“Delicate is another word for ‘fragile.’ You are not weak. I knew from the moment I brought you into this world that, like the dragon, you would have fire nourishing your heart. I simply didn’t see that the fire would be ignited here, with such tragedy.” A strange light flashed from Serana’s eyes as she looked down at Pippa, flames licking at the depths of her pupils. “You lived because the dark deeds of this night needed a witness. Because your destiny is to bring justice to your fallen loved ones.”

“But … I’m just a girl.”

Serana’s sigh contained all the yawning sadness of several lifetimes lived in only a handful of decades. “You are no longer just a girl, I think. And if you decide, I will find those who will teach you to become a woman who can reap justice.”

“I don’t know what justice means,” Pippa whispered through her tears.

“What about revenge, do you understand the meaning of that?”

Pippa thought about the word. Revenge. It thundered through her with a new meaning, igniting in her breast a spark that was fanned into an inferno by loss and grief and pain.

Vengeance. It meant every person responsible for tonight would burn.

She’d save the worst of her wrath for whomever had taken Declan Chandler from her.

CHAPTER TWO

London, 1892; Twenty Years Later

Lady Francesca Cavendish glared at the naked man draped across the bed with disgust.

She would never live down this tryst. The ton would be in an uproar. Why would a woman as young, rich, and titled as she, bother with a creature as old and odious as Lord Colfax? they would ask. Can she really be so craven?

Was she being too obvious? Would her enemies guess what she was about?

Frowning, Francesca rolled her eyes and pulled a few more pins from her hair as she assessed her appearance in the gilded mirror of Lord Colfax’s bedchamber.

She just might look like a loose-moraled spinster who’d enjoyed a rollicking night of unbridled sex. Not, however, the kind of night other unfortunate women had reported to have had with Lord Colfax.

He was a famously passionate rake. A ruiner of clothing and reputations. A user of women and worse.

A man who deserved what he was about to get.

Pursing her lips, she let out a breath of exasperation. What could she change about her appearance to make the ruse more believable? Her gold bodice drooped in tatters, the lace mangled and torn. Her skirt was a puddle of silk on the carpets, and one of the ribbons on her garters had disappeared. Her scarlet coiffeur hung limply to the left, half the pins scattered or missing. She’d never really been able to hold a curl, so her locks appeared more garbled than tousled.

Still … it didn’t look right. She didn’t look right.

Puffing a bit of fringe away from her forehead, she shrugged a slim, pale shoulder. Old Colfax likely wouldn’t notice. Men were so extraordinarily oblivious. They’d believe just about any sort of hogwash if it fed their largely undeserved egos.

And yet … how could they not suspect her deception?

A woman’s skin glowed with dewy luminescence if she’d been well and truly ridden. Her eyes would laze at only half-mast, glistening with a dreamy satisfaction. Her lips were often swollen and the skin about her mouth a little pinkened as though scrubbed with something abrasive. Like a man’s stubble or beard.

Sometimes those marks were elsewhere. Her neck, her clavicles.

Lower.

Francesca did her best to soften the gem-hard green of her eyes, to blink them with a slothful sort of decadence. There, that almost seemed like—

A loud snore shook the crystals twinkling from the wall sconces next to the stately bed.

She whirled, studying her so-called lover for signs of consciousness. Her heart gave a few kicks, threatening not to remain as steady as she’d trained it to be.

Lord Colfax was larger than most of the men with whom she played this sort of sport. Not tall, exactly. But wide and