A Bewitching Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

and press your gown for the morn.”
    “Nonsense! I’m not the queen. I can dress and undress myself.” The thought of Elsie’s unskilled hand pressing her gown was alarming. The gown didn’t belong to her but to her sister. “I’m only here for my shawl, then I’ll be going back to party with my friends.” Her eye was caught by an envelope on her bedside table. “What’s this, Elsie?”
    Elsie shook her head. “I must have dozed while I waited for you. When I opened my eyes, that letter was on the carpet, just inside the door.”
    “Off to bed with you, then.”
    While Elsie slipped quietly from the room, Kate slit open the envelope with a pair of embroidery scissors she’d placed in the table drawer by the bed, then held the note close to the oil lamp to see it better. And a vise closed around her heart.
    “In Scotland we burn witches,” she read.
    She didn’t know how long she sat there in a stupor. It was a knock on the door that brought her to her senses. She gave a start and jumped to her feet.
    Sally’s voice. “What’s keeping you, Kate?”
    She wasn’t going to tell anyone about the note except Dr. Rankin. He was the only one who knew her secret. Had he shared it with someone else?
    The doorknob rattled. “Kate?”
    Through the door, Kate said, “I think I’ve had too much to drink, Sally. I’m going to sleep it off.”
    Her mind was in too much of a whirl to make sense of what Sally said next, but she heard footsteps retreating along the corridor and heaved a sigh of relief.
    She read the note again and again, and each time she read it, her nerves grew tighter and tighter. It was a lie. She wasn’t a witch. She was a normal girl who had an uncanny ability to sense danger, much like a creature of the wild. Isn’t that what Dr. Rankin told her?
    Of one thing she was sure. This wasn’t a joke. This was the threat she had sensed pervading the very air she breathed all evening. She could not, would not settle until she’d spoken to Dr. Rankin.
    She put the letter back in its envelope and debated for a moment what she would do with it. She had to talk to Dr. Rankin. He would know what to do. She was sorely tempted to throw it on the fire. In the end, she thrust it in her pocket and left her chamber, carefully locking the door behind her.
     
     
    Gavin sensed her presence the moment she entered the dining room. She was in the same gray gown that she’d worn at the wedding reception and earlier tonight at dinner. She wasn’t the only lady who was forced to wear the same gown two nights in a row. Most guests expected to be home by now and had packed accordingly.
    A smile briefly touched her lips, and he turned his head to see the lucky recipient of her favor. He might have known it. Thomas Steele, or Prince Charming, as Will called him, shook off his retinue of female admirers and quickly crossed to her. Her smile was fleeting. Thomas’s smile hinted at intimacy. Gavin watched them with brows drawn as they exchanged a few words. He was on the point of getting up and joining them when she turned from Thomas and began to wend her way toward him.
    So she did know he existed. A smile warmed his lips.
    “Mr. Hepburn,” she said, doing no more than acknowledging his presence before she moved past him to the next card table where Will Rankin was seated. There was a short conference, then Will got up and escorted Miss Cameron to the hothouse at the back of the dining room. They were in earnest conversation, and Will looked as though he’d received a blow.
    “Gavin, pay attention!”
    Janet Mayberry’s eyes fairly bored into his. “Sorry,” he said and arranged the cards he’d been dealt. He played out his hand and won the set just to please Janet. When he next looked for Kate Cameron, she was nowhere to be seen, though Will was still with the widow McCrae, looking as jovial as ever.
    What in Hades’s name was going on? If there was something between Will and Miss Cameron, why hadn’t Will