The Devil in Her Bed (Devil You Know #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,81
the reaction she’d expected at all. The opposite, in fact.
Then, quite suddenly, all traces of emotion vanished in a transformation no less than mythical. One moment he was a man, and the next he was a pillar of stone. Cold. Remote.
Unreachable.
The change terrified her more than any display of temper could have.
“I understand why you’re angry,” she said, attempting to placate him. “Your intelligence was faulty, and that wasted a great deal of time.” She stepped closer and reached for him.
He backed away, crushing the letter in his fist. “No. No, it fucking wasn’t.”
“What? Stop that! Give over that letter. It’s all that’s left of my—of our childhood.” She’d almost said her father.
He thrust it at her and she took it, smoothing the corners.
“That foolish fuck,” he said with a flat, droll affect.
“I beg your pardon?” The tether on her temper, short and thin as it was, began to slip. “This man admired you.” She shook the paper at him. “He wanted to take you in, to give you a future. What about that is foolish? You were an orphan and he was an endlessly decent man. The best of men, I daresay.”
He shook his head, backing away from her, inching toward the door. “We should leave. Now.”
“But—” She took another step forward, and he held a hand up against her.
Suddenly she felt like a child again, desperate and unsure. Brash and hurt by his diffidence. “What is wrong?” she pleaded. “I don’t understand.”
Something in her features must have spoken to him because his face softened a mere increment. “I know.” He let out an eternal breath. “I know.”
“Let’s go to that pub and get that meal,” she ventured. “We can talk about this. You can tell me why you’re being so very odd.”
He gave his head a curt shake. “I have to go to the Secret Services.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“No?” she gritted out through ever-clenching teeth. “Have you not yet learned how I react to the word no?”
For a moment his eyes turned amber and molten, but that disappeared as he spoke to her with a jaw just as hard and insolent as hers. “Tell me, Francesca, do you have any idea where you are supposed to meet the Crimson Council tonight?”
Her eyes shifted to the side and she crossed her arms, hiding the precious letter from him. “Well … not exactly. Kenway said a notice would be sent.”
“Wouldn’t it behoove us both, then, to have you waiting at your home when it arrives?”
“Yes,” she conceded carefully. “But can you not at least share what significance this has—”
“No time for that.” He whirled and strode toward the main door. “I’ll explain everything when I return the horse.”
She rushed after him, taking quick light steps to his heavy long ones. “When will that be?” she asked.
“I cannot say.”
“Chandler. Can you not at least—”
“I said no, Francesca.” The hard ire in his voice echoed off the walls and battered her with fractals of rejection.
“If you cannot be agreeable, then at least be sensible for once. I will contact you when I can.”
Turning, he slammed the door behind him, right in her face.
She stared at the iron ingots in the frame and counted the scratches from untold years of wear as she finished her sentence.
“Can you not at least kiss me goodbye?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It fucking ended tonight. One way or another, this saga was done, and blood would be spilled. Final blood.
Chandler kept a stranglehold on his emotion until he’d put enough distance between him and Francesca. From that goddamned letter.
He wandered at a fast clop through the city, searching for a place for his wrath to land.
When other people ran from danger, Chandler had always found the grit within himself to run toward it. He was the sort of man to douse a raging fire, or to charge someone with a weapon. He was the antithesis of chaos and at his best in a crisis. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t look away from pain, horror, blood, or suffering. Nothing overwhelmed him, or repulsed him, or disturbed him so much that he could not confront it.
He’d wager he’d seen just about everything and he found a certain Viking-like freedom in the knowledge that his stars were cursed. That the fates would fuck him every time he reached for happiness, and so the best he could hope for was to never again be shot in the back.
When his enemies claimed him, which was an inevitability, they’d stare the Devil of Dorset in the eyes,