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

In that moment, the door clicked open, and a maid came in carrying tea and biscuits. She set it on the sideboard and curtsied. “Mrs. Pickering said she’d be up directly, miss.”

“Thank you, Jane. Tell her there is no reason to rush. Mr. Severand and I are getting along quite well.”

For some reason she did not dare identify, Felicity didn’t want company other than his at present.

“Yes, miss.” Jane glanced over at Mr. Severand and swallowed audibly. “I-If you are in need of assistance, ring the bell. Mr. Bartholomew is just outside the door.”

This was obviously said for his benefit rather than hers.

“Thank you, Jane.”

When Felicity turned back to Mr. Severand, she found he’d taken the paper and retreated to his seat to study it intently.

It was no epistle or manifesto, merely a sketching of Cresthaven Place engulfed in flames, with a chilling message printed hastily below.

I will claim what is mine.

“Do you have the envelope this arrived in?” he asked in a lethally subdued voice.

“That’s just it,” she explained. “It wasn’t in the post. I found it on my personal correspondence secretary here in my parlor.” She gestured to the desk in question, strewn with stationery and several of her favorite pens.

“Whoever left this was in my house and my staff witnessed nothing.” She shivered as she did whenever the picture of the intruder invaded her mind’s eye.

“This evidence suggests that my attack was not random violence, but something far more malevolent. Needless to say, I find personal protection necessary until I can secure a husband who’s responsible for my safety. Since Parliament is in session, and my mourning for my parents is considered officially over, I’m expected to take a season. I-I need someone at my side so I can feel… so I am safe. At least until this enemy can be discovered and dealt with.”

Felicity paused. Waiting for him to say something.

Wishing he were closer.

As a nervous sort of creature, she’d become a master at reading expressions, sussing out people’s responses and emotions, if only to predict what their reactions might be at any given point so she could avoid conflict or worse.

Mr. Gareth Severand was not a man easily read, nor was he predictable. Even without her spectacles on, she was categorically certain of that.

“What about your family, Miss Goode?” he asked, still studying the paper in his hand. “Is not your brother-in-law a rather famous chief inspector at Scotland Yard? Has he seen this?”

Felicity glanced away, not for the first time wishing her family had not become so infamous through no fault of their own.

Well… almost.

“Chief Inspector Morley and my sister Prudence are abroad for a few weeks, settling my parents’ final overseas interests. My eldest sister Honoria and her husband live above the Alcott Surgical Specialty Hospital. She’s in her confinement with child, and is over thirty years. I’m told that makes pregnancy exponentially more difficult. I could never visit peril on their household or their patients. What if stress or danger caused Nora— that’s what we call her— to lose the baby? I’d never forgive myself.”

Felicity looked down at her lap, plucking a stray fiber off her dark frock. Tomorrow her new trousseau for the season would arrive, and she could put her mourning clothes away for a good long time.

“My sister Mercy…” Sadness drifted like a cloud over her heart, mingling with the love she felt for her twin. “She’s on an extended honeymoon, and I can’t say exactly where in the world she is at the moment. But I’m fairly certain she couldn’t make it home in time to do any good, and I don’t want to bother her…”

She glanced back in Mr. Severand’s direction, noting that he’d folded the paper back up, but made no move to return it to her. “I-I did show that to a detective,” she informed him. “He’s the one who suggested I should engage personal security… so here you are.”

“Here I am.”

Was it her imagination, or did he sound none too happy about the prospect? Perhaps he didn’t think he’d be a good fit for the job? Or maybe he could not be away from a family for so long?

“May I ask you a question, Miss Goode?” he queried, leaning forward in his chair.

“Certainly.”

“Do you think your assailant meant to… to have his way with you?”

She swallowed and shuddered, but ultimately shook her head in the negative. “I can’t speak to his ultimate designs, but there was nothing suggestive in his manner. Only violent. I know this sounds— well, I haven’t much reference to pull from— but the attack felt personal. That man… he hated me. I didn’t recognize him at all, but he hated me. He liked what he did to me. He enjoyed the fact that he could cause me pain and I was helpless against his strength.”

“Doesn’t seem possible,” Severand murmured, turning his head away from her. “Someone hating you.”

Something about the way he said that evoked a pleasant heat from beneath her collar to climb her neck and spread to her cheeks.

“Some people can hate you for just being born,” she murmured, thinking of her father.

“That’s true enough.”

They shared a companionable silence. A discovery of a common pain, unspoken but already understood.

Felicity had known only a few men of close acquaintance. The first being her father, the Baron. A rotund bear of a man, his voice booming and his manners bombastic. He’d been overbearing, extremely religious, and unrelentingly critical. He’d had two loves in his life, money and power, and only paid his four daughters attention when he could use them to acquire more of one or the other.

To increasingly disastrous effect.

Even in death, the Baron controlled her future. Not with an iron fist, but an ironclad contract.

Her brothers-in-law were each of them good men in their own right. They had power or passion or both. They were protective rather than controlling, and adored her sisters with enviable devotion. Her family was so lively, and