The Devil in Her Bed (Devil You Know #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,97

been no one else for me in the entire world but you. Why do you think I remained a virgin until I was nearly thirty? To touch someone else seemed like a betrayal, so I—”

His lips were on her before she could finish, and his hands were everywhere. He crowded her back to the bed where they fell together in a heap of limbs and love.

Francesca forgot about any truth but this. Chandler loved her, and she loved him. The rest would be sorted out later, when they had a moment to breathe and grieve and tell truths when their love wasn’t so new. So vulnerable. When other truths were not so painful and Kenway and the council had been dealt with.

For now, a dragon would guard her secrets and his heart.

Because she’d finally stolen it, and wasn’t ready for the chance that he could take it back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A sound Chandler had never heard before pulled him out of a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep.

“What the devil—”

It jangled his nerves. It … jangled, like a little bell repeatedly pealing.

He leapt out of bed and was reaching for a weapon when Francesca’s plaintive moan broke him of his panic.

“Telephone.” She pressed her hands to her ears. “Off with its head.”

“How do you have a telephone?” he demanded, blindly making his way to the corner where it was located. “I thought they were only used for business and government.”

“That’s why I have a telephone,” she said, as if that were any answer at all.

Chandler picked up the receiver, rubbing his shin where he’d kicked the edge of some furniture in the dark.

“We have the fucking devil, Lady Francesca,” growled a familiar Scottish brogue through the tinny circle at his ear. “We have Kenway in a cell and, if I have anything to say about it, he willna see the light of day again.”

Chandler closed his eyes, a torrent of relief and darker, more complicated emotions swamping him in a cascade of strange sensations. He’d known he had much to answer for once morning came. That by abandoning the raid with Francesca, he’d risked Kenway going to ground. He risked the priorities of the raid, and that wasn’t the decision he’d have made in the past. But if it came down to who he’d rather get his hands on, his father or Francesca …

He peered at her across the room, watching the glow of the city slant across the pristine white of her bed, turning her into a tangle of pink flesh and red hair. The woman who’d brought color back to his life.

Somehow, she’d become more important than his vengeance.

“Countess…” An uncharacteristic hesitation crept into Ramsay’s voice at the silence. “He’s making some incredible claims … I ken this is an indelicate question, but is Chandler with ye?”

“I’m right here,” he rumbled.

“Christ, man.” Ramsay almost sounded relieved that it was he and not Francesca on the line. It didn’t even seem to faze him to find him in her residence at—he glanced at the mantel clock—half past three AM. “Kenway is either a maniacal genius or a raving lunatic.”

“Both,” Chandler grunted, rubbing an exhausted hand over his face.

He’d have thought the news would rouse him, but it served to only deflate him. Not with melancholy, but with a deep, soul-weary reprieve. It was as though a war had ended, and the idea of it was a bit disorienting.

“He says … well, he insists, really, that ye’re Luther Kenway the Second, his son and heir. Does he speak the truth?”

Francesca made another plaintive noise and stretched like a cat before rolling over to grope for the lamp. Chandler didn’t want the light. He didn’t want any of this. He merely wanted to be allowed to crawl back in the white clouds of her sheets, pull her close, and sleep until noon.

“Yes,” he sighed.

A slew of rather guttural Gaelic curses had him pulling the receiver from his ear as Francesca finally lit the lamp and blinked over at him. She looked as bleary as he felt. Bleary and beautiful. The tousled tangles of her hair created a halo of scarlet around her face and shoulders, reminding him that she was no angel, and he preferred it that way.

“Is it Ramsay?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Did he apprehend Kenway?”

Another nod.

Ramsay let out a wicked breath. “With a father like that, no wonder ye never claimed yer nobility.”

The man’s words thrust a pang through his middle. He’d expected censure, not understanding. “There’s nothing noble about that man,” he