The Devil in Her Bed (Devil You Know #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,99
certain the Kenway line is untainted by common blood.”
It was the last thing he’d expected the earl to say. “What do you mean?”
“Are you looking at the Countess of Mont Claire right now?”
He was. He was staring deep into the verdant depths of her eyes, and he saw a glimmer of something there, something that lanced him with a dread no less than biblical. He felt a cold fear flushing the warmth of their lovemaking from his veins.
“You don’t have to say, I know she’s there.” Kenway suddenly sounded very young and relentlessly eager, like a youth about to receive his first kiss. “What a lovely woman she is,” he crooned. “So supple and skilled. Ruthless, like us. Brilliant, wouldn’t you say? And beautiful. Those long, lean legs that seem to go on forever—”
“I’m hanging up now, you fuc—”
“Those legs are not so smooth, my son. If you venture lower than what’s between them, you’ll find a scar on the left calf, just below the knee … a scar my men put there twenty years ago as the both of you ran from them into the woods.”
Chandler dropped the receiver as if it burned him. The chill of fear solidified to ice. Hardened in his veins and in the very fibers that knit his soul together.
“What did Ramsay say?” she asked anxiously. “Was that your—”
Chandler lunged forward, ripping the coverlet off her still-naked form.
Startled, she instinctively bent her leg up and crossed it over her body to cover her nakedness …
Displaying a shallow, faded scar to ultimate effect.
“Chandler! What the devil are you doing?”
A bleak, icy rage colored the night with an azure hue. Not red, not like murder. It was hotter than that, blue like the flames that burned at the highest temperature. Like the deepest parts of hell that even the souls of the damned couldn’t reach.
The chamber saved for the devil, himself.
He seized her calf, bending closer, letting his thumb test the knitted flesh. Someone had stitched it long ago, when the bullet had grazed it while they both ran for their lives.
He let it go as if the flesh had burned him, nearly flinging the offending appendage away from him. “Pippa.” Her name was an accusation. A curse. Nay, a profanity. How could she fucking dare?
She rose to her knees on the bed, and he stared at her nubile form with more assessment than appreciation. Pippa fucking Hargrave? The short, chubby little blonde with the round cheeks and the talent for driving him mad. She’d turned a tragedy into a personal triumph, and had stolen the legacy of an entire bloodline. And for what?
“I can explain,” she whispered, reaching for him.
He reared away from her, turning to search the room for his trousers. “There is no excuse in the world good enough for what you’ve done.”
“I know!” She astonished him by agreeing. “I wanted to tell you from the beginning, but I—I didn’t know it was you at first, and then … I wasn’t sure whether or not you would turn me in to the Secret Services.”
He snatched his trousers from the floor at the foot of the bed and shoved his legs into them. “You were afraid that you’d, what, lose her title? Her fortune?” he demanded as he fumbled with the fastenings. “That’s so fucking diabolical.”
She pulled the sheet to her breasts as if it could shield her from his words. “How can you think that? I was afraid I’d lose her revenge. Our revenge. I was afraid I could lose my life! I did this for you most of all—”
He whirled and stabbed the air with his finger in her direction. “Don’t you fucking dare say that.”
“Why? It’s the truth.” She kept having to turn as he stalked around the bedroom, gathering his shirt, his shoes, his cravat. “You were dead, Chandler. Everyone was dead and your father stood in line to inherit everything. I couldn’t allow that. I didn’t think I’d hurt anyone by keeping it from him, so I reshaped my body with training and discipline, I dyed my hair, and…”
“And you fucking took Francesca’s fucking life?” He punched his arms into his shirt.
At that, her features lost some of their fear and replaced it with obstinacy. “No, I didn’t. Tuttle took her life, that bloody American, right in front of me. He slit her throat while I was still holding her hand. I have to live with that. I have to see that when I close my eyes. You don’t.”