Tempting Fate by Kerrigan Byrne (best free ereader .TXT) 📕

his chin in a pensive posture. “I will consult with him, but the poisoning aspect of this… it doesn’t feel like Marco. Neither does hiring others to do his wet work. If there is killing to be done, that bastard will jump at the chance to get his hands dirty every time.” He studied Felicity so intently, she swore she could hear the gears of his brain grinding away. “Tell me of this fortune you have inherited… It is common knowledge?”

Felicity squirmed. “Yes.”

“Have you turned down any proposals lately, from men who would be after your assets?”

“There have been a several suitors of interest, most recently the Earl of Bainbridge. However, he proposed after I was threatened or attacked. I can’t think of what his motive would be.”

“I can,” Mercy interjected. “He is our cousin of some distance, and an earl, besides, but I have heard he’s quite penniless. He needs an heiress.”

“Yes, but he was honest with me about that. It’s part of why I decided we wouldn’t suit. And while he made it abundantly clear that he didn’t love me, he was nothing but cordial when I refused him.”

Raphael stroked his angular jaw. “Bainbridge… he lives in the vicinity?”

“He does, just on the other side of the park.”

Nodding, he seemed to come to a conclusion. “Well, it’s important we find Marco whether he’s behind this or not. I won’t feel that either of you are safe until I’m able to spit on his grave. However, I’d like to speak to this Bainbridge.”

“Gareth— Gabriel didn’t seem to think highly of him,” she said.

Smirking, Raphael went to the door. “My brother has excellent instincts, though in this case, they might be a bit suspect. Perhaps we can get Morley involved, now that he’s back from the Continent.”

At that, Felicity groaned. “I don’t want everyone to make a fuss.”

“If your life is in danger, Felicity,” Mercy shook her elbow, “best you get used to a bit of fuss, and be glad it’s not an all-out war.”

Felicity proffered a weak smile, deeply grateful for such a family as this, regardless of her trepidation over the attention.

“Well, let us all get some much-needed rest, yes?” Raphael yawned, though whether in earnest or for effect, it was difficult to say.

Felicity stood and kissed her sister goodnight, reveling in their closeness, as if one half of her had been returned. “I missed you. I’m glad you’re back.”

“I made it back just in time, I see,” Mercy said, clinging to her. “I’ll go to hell before I see you married for anything but affection. I don’t care what Father wrote in that damned will. He was wrong. It was like a parting shot.”

At that, Felicity tensed. “Does my fortune go to Bainbridge upon my death?”

“No,” Mercy answered.

“Then, who?”

Her sister’s mouth fell open. “The solicitor said there was a list of names, but he cannot reveal them to you or to the other recipients until such time as is deemed necessary.”

“Say someone found out…” Felicity postulated. “Shouldn’t everyone on that list be considered a suspect?”

“Then it is the solicitor we go to first thing,” Raphael said, his eyes glittering with a dark anticipation. “We’ll make him talk.”

Chapter 14

Knowing sleep was impossible, Felicity stood outside Gabriel’s door for several breaths.

She could feel him in there. A man like that carried some sort of atmosphere with him, like the current in the air before a storm broke.

A warning, most probably, to creatures of prey.

The effects of his nearness were familiar to her now. Little vibrations of the fine hairs on her body or a prickle of awareness washing down her spine.

Except the thought of him devouring her made her tremble with emotions other than fear.

I am not kind.

He’d said that to her in the very beginning. He’d always cautioned her about who he was. And yet, it was in his very sin against her that he proved his own claim false.

His lie was meant to be kind.

Lifting her fist, she meant to knock at his door. But froze.

Asking for what she wanted, what she needed, had rarely ever gone well, and Raphael’s revelations about his brother had both clarified and complicated things.

She’d been shattered by discovery of his past. By the barbarity he’d had to endure. And she did comprehend that his hands knew no other trade than violence and crime.

He’d never had a woman. Never been a lover.

Never been loved.

He was a weapon, and she was nothing of the sort.

Everything said and left unsaid between them surged from her breath and broke on the barrier of the door. What would this conversation look like? When they were both so overwrought and frustrated by everything from desire to circumstance. Would he be kind, now that the lie was uncovered?

Would he stay?

She lowered her hand back to her side, calling herself nine shades of coward.

Not tonight. If things went terribly between them, she’d not have the fortitude to withstand his rejection or abandonment.

With a frustrated sigh, she slunk away to the stairs, heading down toward her father’s study across from her parlor in the front hall.

There, in the extraordinarily masculine space, she used her lamplight to search through what little paperwork had been left in his enormous desk, deemed personal by the solicitors and accountants. If they’d not found anything of note in the more official documents, perhaps she could find a clue in the personal effects she hadn’t yet gotten around to sorting out.

After more than an hour of reading records with financial or legal language she barely comprehended, she slid off her spectacles and rubbed at her tired eyes. All she had left were the household accounts. Opening that book, she squinted down at the tedious figures beneath her, written in her father’s decisive script.

Here was his life in integers. In money, the thing he’d valued over his own family.

With a wistful sort of resentment, she ran her fingers over the long sheet. Past payments for stable feed and servants’ salaries going back