The Devil in Her Bed (Devil You Know #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,65

so to speak, and scare nine shades of shit out of her. He’d tell her the truth if he had to. If it came to that.

That once he’d been an innocent on the altar of Kenway’s sacrifice.

That the Crimson Council had not taken everything away from him once … but twice.

That he wouldn’t allow them a third chance. Not her. Not this time.

Chandler approached her home, trying the doors and the windows first, gratified to find them locked up tighter than a nun’s knickers. At least she wasn’t a complete fool. He’d been starting to wonder if she had any sense of caution or self-preservation beneath all that boldness and bravado.

As he made his way around to the back of the house, he ran his fingers along the stone, letting it catch and abrade the calluses on his hands. He’d felt matching calluses on her fingers. Ones that might have been made in a similar fashion as his. With weapons, and weights, and physically punishing combat arts.

He scaled her back wall with climbing picks, planting them into the mortared brick beneath the ivy and levering his body above each one. He held his weight with one hand as he drove the other into the stone, waiting for a gust of wind loud enough to cover the sound.

When he reached her second-floor balcony, he picked the lock and let himself in, careful not to get wrapped up in the white drapes that floated around him like the shifts of spirits warning him away.

The second-floor balcony belonged to a guest room, and he tiptoed through it, avoiding the shadows of furniture, and let himself into the hall.

Her house smelled different from most. Less like flowers and perfume and more like herbs and earth. Had he been blindfolded he might have thought he’d broken into a witch’s lair. The pleasant aromatics of magic bubbling in a cauldron over the fire.

He padded up a flight of stairs, following the architect’s map he’d memorized of her home that he’d acquired some nights ago from the records office. The master suite looked over the gardens in the back and had its own balcony, though Francesca had erected an iron fence around it complete with medieval-looking spikes just as dangerous as they were decorative.

He’d done his best not to be impressed.

Chandler’s heart was not an unsteady organ. It didn’t give in to bouts of emotion-fueled pumping. It was a fit muscle, efficient and steady.

Which was why he found it insufferable that its thundering was all he could hear as he put his ear to the door.

Taking a steady breath, he turned the latch slowly and let himself into the darkness.

He was taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust when a lamp blazed to life with the flick of a switch to reveal his prey.

Or rather, Francesca, her knees bent in a fighting stance, a pistol in one hand and the glint of something he couldn’t make out in the other.

Upon seeing him, she lowered her weapons. “Oh,” she breathed in relief. “I had a feeling it was you.”

“Did you plan to kill me?” he asked.

She lowered her weapons, setting them on the nightstand. “I just had to be sure. You know. In case it was a murderer or some such unpleasant thing.” She bent to straighten the covers of a bed into which she obviously hadn’t retired yet and then patted it in invitation. “Here. Sit.”

Chandler didn’t sit. He stared.

It was widely thought that women were delicate creatures. Like seashells and flower petals. Like things that were easy to break and crush and discard. Useful, pretty. Ephemeral.

If this was so, Francesca Cavendish was a flower made of steel.

A curious ache opened in Chandler’s chest, welling from a place that had been drowned in suffering long ago. He’d learned how to hate so early, and how to pluck the weaknesses and flaws from a person with such efficiency, he wasn’t certain he was able to do anything but distrust. He was a cynic, a manipulator, and sometimes, when the situation called for it, he was a monster. He never looked at people, but he disassembled them moments after. He poked about their insides to see where the strings were, so he could pull them.

But what he saw before him was an entire woman. A person. Whole and bold and true. The wind whistled at the shutters of her window, but only whispers of a draft got through. He thought he heard her name in the gusts,