A Lady's Revenge Read Online Free PDF

tunneled her finger beneath the bothersome turban to scratch her itchy scalp. She hated wearing the ridiculous adornment, but Dinks insisted, since they hadn’t yet cleaned up Boucher’s handiwork.
    Her reluctant gaze shifted to Guy, the Earl of Helsford, as he was now called after his father’s passing last year. With his broad back facing the room, she got a good look at his unfashionably long black hair trailing from a leather thong at his nape. She toyed with the blunt ends of her own hair peeking from beneath her turban and experienced a momentary pang of envy.
    Their years apart had wrought compelling changes in his physique. On the few occasions he had visited her sick room, she hadn’t been able stop herself from drinking in his sheer masculinity. Then, as now, power radiated off his body in disturbing waves that both attracted and rebuffed. The angular set of his jaw, the tempting fullness of his mouth, and the stillness of his warrior stance left her feeling awkward and ugly and completely enthralled.
    But she also recognized the hollowness hovering behind his watchful eyes. Something horrid lurked in the dark cavern of his gaze, something strong enough to rattle the cage he had carefully erected around his emotions. What past event drew him so completely from the present that she had to prod him several times to return?
    She sighed softly, frustrated that time and distance hadn’t dampened her curiosity about him. As with many times in the past, she would either uncover the answers she sought or banish the question from her thoughts. The option she took depended entirely on how it affected her primary goal of finding the man who killed her parents.
    Her hand slid to the pendant hanging from her neck. I haven’t given up, Mama.
    “Thank you for meeting with us,” Somerton said, interrupting her thoughts.
    Her former guardian’s commanding crystalline gaze settled on her, as disquieting as always. She had never feared him, but the intensity of his study had an unnerving effect on her.
    Somerton continued, “Would it not have been better for us to come to you?”
    Cora smoothed her hand over the lap blanket. “I needed a change of scenery.” How did one explain the feeling of walls closing in on oneself? She had wanted, needed to come to the library. Her chest rose high, and she took in the peaceful smell of old tomes and burning coals that tinged the air. The library had always been her favorite place in the house.
    Soon after their parents’ deaths, she and her brother Ethan had been conveyed to their new home at 35 Charles Street. During those first few months, she would sneak downstairs at night and curl up in Somerton’s large overstuffed chair near the fireplace.
    Sometimes she would read until the wee hours of the morning; sometimes she would cry herself to sleep. And sometimes she would stare listlessly into the dying embers of the fire and wonder what awful deed she had done to make God punish her so.
    Cora shrugged off her old demons and angled her head toward the room’s occupants. Across from where she sat, Ethan balanced on the edge of her old favorite chair. Restlessness vibrated off her brother in thick, tense waves. His striking resemblance to their father comforted and unsettled her in the same breath.
    In vivid contrast, Somerton, watchful and silent, anchored himself in front of the grate filled with burning coals. His broad shoulders and thickly muscled body made him an imposing figure. Many who did not know her former guardian would label him cold and unfeeling. Cora knew better. Somerton had honored his best friend’s request to look after his two young children when it would have been easier to ship them off to a distant relative. He had given her everything she had needed and more, including the resources to avenge her parents’ murders.
    Somerton moved to stand before her, his hands clasped behind his back. “We will take this as slowly as you wish. But I need to know how you