A Dark Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

were bound together by that dark night, and by their shared need for vengeance
against the men who'd ruined both of their lives.
    Percy, who'd hidden behind a dead brother's name, a pair of trousers and
a sharp knife, had grown up hard and fast in Whitechapel after the fire,
graduating from pick-pocket to blade-for-hire by the time she was ten. She
seemed to know every fence and pimp in the East End, could pick a lock with a
cravat pin, and was extremely skilled at gathering information on anything
ranging from the current contents of a duke's wardrobe, to the timetables and inventory
of every smuggling vessel that unloaded along the air docks.
    And Elijah had never seen anyone handle a blade like Percy did, which
explained how she'd survived for so long on the streets, despite her size and
sex. She was as quick as a bird of prey and as devious as a snake. Elijah
didn't trust her as far as he could throw her ... or at least as far as he once
could have thrown her before he'd been turned into a monster of infinite
strength.
    But their relationship worked. In exchange for information and the
occasional favor, Elijah turned a blind eye to Percy's schemes ... though
Elijah doubted he knew even half of what Percy was involved in.
    In Percy's latest manifestation as Percival Parminter, Bond Street
peacock and valet-for-hire to gentlemen of the ton , she'd certainly
outdone herself. She actually flaunted her feminine attributes. Beneath the
short, mannish tow hair, she had delicate, angelic features and pale, milky
skin, and she clothed her long, sleek, and seemingly fragile body in fastidiously
tailored clothes in colors that most men wouldn't be caught dead in. The only
nods to masculinity were the thin little false mustache she wore across her
upper lip, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles to obscure her long-lashed, womanly
eyes, and the anatomically correct bulge in her too-tight trousers.
    Elijah didn't want to know what she stuffed down there.
    But her disguise, perhaps because of its embrace of her effeminacy,
worked. No one had ever suspected she was anything other than what she appeared
to be: a man – a preening peacock who doubtless enjoyed the company of
other men – but a man nonetheless. She was a very good actress.
    Quite literally, for in another one of her identities, she was Polly
Penry, darling of the Covent Garden stage.
    At the moment, however, Percy was rocking on her heels, surveying him in
dismay over the edge of her spectacles. She was dressed to the nines as usual, reviving
the fashion of the fops of the previous century with a bottle-green cutout
coat, pink – pink! – silk jacquard waistcoat, and tall
riding boots polished to a painful sheen. But the pièce de résistance, as Percival Parminter would have drawled, was an old-fashioned cravat that fell
from the neck in an elaborate waterfall cascade. She looked ridiculous.
    And she smelled too good. At least her blood did, especially to a newly
awakened leech like himself who'd not fed in days. He couldn't stop his fangs
from descending, so violently that he nicked his own lip.
    "Damn it," he growled, flopping over in his bed and burying his
face in the pillow, fighting the urge to feed on his houseguest.
    "Thirsty, are we?" Percy said, too brightly for his taste,
poking him in the buttocks with the tip of his own cane. The blighter.
    Elijah swatted her away and slowly sat up, willing the craving away. It
didn't work. And though she tried to, even the street-hardened confidence
artist couldn't hide her unease at the sight of his fangs and glowing eyes. She
took a few steps away from the bed, holding his long cane between them.
    As if that would protect her. She might have been able to defend
herself against him before he was turned – he'd once had the knife scars
to prove it – but she wouldn't stand a chance against him if he lost
control now. And once he lost control, he'd drink her dry.
    And still the thirst would remain.
    She was either incredibly