A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

when Miss Waters was engrossed in a book, the whole manor could come down around her ears, and she wouldn’t so much as look up.
    “So, the church it is,” Catherine said. “And the second sample from the end, I think, if you have no favorite. The phaeton and my red team, to convey us there and back. We should make quite the impression.”
    Quite the impression, indeed. Catherine’s peacock blue, gilt-trimmed phaeton was the flashiest carriage in the county. Her matched pair of red chestnuts always turned heads, with their identical white blazes and white socks up to their high-stepping knees. Richard admired the skill of Catherine’s driver in keeping them in hand.
    “I thought maybe my brougham, and my bays,” he said hopefully. Good solid horses, handsome but quiet.
    “The brougham if it rains, but the red pair either way.”
    “If you insist, my love.”  
    At least she hadn’t suggested the horseless carriage. Possibly because its steam engine was currently in pieces on the floor of the carriage house while Catherine worked on ‘improvements.’
    He glanced toward the assistant. She was still engrossed in her book.
    “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he whispered. “If my secret is discovered… It would have been bad before, but with the new law. . .”
    No need to say which law. It was now illegal for a werewolf to marry a human not so afflicted. The official reason given was the fact werewolves were often incapable of producing offspring—though he hoped to prove one of the exceptions. The state had an interest in procreation, which was the primary purpose of a lawful and moral marriage, though Richard noted no similar prohibition on the marriage of barren women or of men who proved infertile. The arguments in favor of the law betrayed a different motive. Richard, following the debate closely, watched the newspapers run page after page of editorials condemning werewolves as perverse, unnatural, lustful creatures, worse than animals, incapable of honor or love or commitment. Allowing them to marry, the papers screamed, was a threat to the institution of marriage itself.
    Under the new law the penalties for both the werewolf and anyone who knowingly married a werewolf were severe. Fines, prison—and the utter and irrevocable destruction of reputation. How could he let his love risk herself so?
    She smiled. “You forget that I have a secret of my own.”
    “How could I forget, when your secret helped to bring us together?” He dared a chaste kiss.

Three

    The Fairchild manor was far enough outside the heart of London that neither the omnibus nor the Underground would bring him within reasonable walking distance, and so Royston was obliged to hire a pony trap. He was glad to find that the sturdy little dun provided him was obliging, if a bit sluggish— Royston’s previous and limited equestrian experiences had often been unfortunate. He was no natural with horses.
    He made the excursion at his own expense, though it meant using some of the money he carefully put by after strictly budgeting out each week’s pay. Better that than trying to justify what would doubtless seem like a frivolous expense to pursue trivial facts in a case long closed.
    He had a hard enough time justifying it to himself. But a week of interviews had produced nothing except memories that kept him from sleep, memories that encroached now to darken the bright day. Kitty’s flatmate replaced the faceless women in his nightmares about the next victim. It was only a matter of time. The murderer had taken Kitty two weeks ago. Since the first victim had been found, just after the new year, the killer had never gone much more than three weeks between kills.
    He turned over in his mind what they knew about the killer—nothing—and what he could deduce from the facts—next to nothing. The common assumption that the killer was a man was most likely correct. Not that women weren’t capable of horrible deeds. One of