A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones Read Online Free PDF

Lord Adair shoved the tea
trolley aside and swept her up against him. One arm hitched around her waist,
trapping both her arms as well. A hand clamped her mouth. Her feet were off the
ground and the rest of her was pressed to lean muscle and far more male than
she’d ever encountered.
    Lily screamed uselessly into the large palm slapped over her mouth as
Lord Adair carried her from the drawing room. By the time she remembered to
wriggle and kick, they were halfway down the hall. Not that her efforts or
anything else broke his stride until he reached the front door. He put his back
to the door with some awkward movements that stretched her spine.
    He can’t turn the doorknob without hands.
    A moment later, his hand fell away from her mouth and she let loose a
shrill scream that wasn’t nearly as loud as the one she’d prepared in her head.
As he hauled her outside, she caught a glimpse of Halver barging through the
doorway at the far side of the hallway.
    An unlikely image accosted her wits.
    Halver sprawled on the floor, his body broken, his eyes dull and
sunken in his ashen face.
    “Get us the hell away from here.”
    She didn’t see who Lord Adair had called out to, but she did remember
to start screaming again as he shoved her inside a carriage. The carriage
lurched even before the door slammed shut. Lord Adair piled up beside her on
the velvet bunk. He dragged her sideways onto his lap and slapped that damnable
hand over her screams.
    Lily couldn’t see anything beyond the drawn curtains. Suddenly it
dawned on her that Lord Adair was no longer attempting abduction. It was fait
accompli .
    She went limp against him, overwhelmed by her own
powerlessness and the shock of his audacious behaviour. Pressed to his chest,
she heard his heartbeat race beneath her cheek. She doubted his scramble down
the path had exerted him overmuch, even with her added weight. The man was all
muscle, hard and tense. She felt it in the thighs she sat across. The arms
wrapped around her. The slab of abdomen and chest she was crushed against.
Which meant his heart raced for another reason. Possibly, hopefully, because he
was realising exactly how appalling his actions were. Abduction. In Grosvenor
Square in broad daylight. It seemed impossible.
    Her own pulse wasn’t racing; it was quivering, as if her heart had to
pause and peer around the corner before each beat.
    The horses slowed to a walk, the carriage gently bumping along to
their gait. They’d turned onto a busy street, the sounds of drivers directing
cattle and pedestrian clatter an arm’s throw away. It may as well have been a
desolate mile for all the help it was to her. What did Lord Adair intend? How
could such a ruffian have been introduced into polite society?
    She sucked in a breath of nothing but fleshy palm. She’d never been
this scared…well, not since she’d…died?
    The fog peeled from her mind like a winter blanket to reveal a
nightmare. The glint of steel as Lord Adair flung his dagger at her. Ana
leaping over the settee, flattening her to the ground. The woman with the plume
of ostrich feathers; Halver tossed through the air; the large man with
expressionless eyes; the fight tearing up her drawing room; Lord Adair
plastered to the wall; the crack of bone as her neck snapped; the slow descent
into blackness; the last thought she should have ever had. Instant death
isn’t instant at all.
    Except here she was, breathing and feeling and having all kinds of new
thoughts. Both her arms were once again trapped within Lord Adair’s steel
embrace; otherwise she would have pinched herself. Lord knew where that impulse
came from. It wasn’t as if she could wake herself up from death.
    “Lily,” came Lord Adair’s gruff burr near her ear, “I’m sorry. There
was no time to explain, nothing I could say that you’d believe. This is the
only way I know to keep you safe. I swear I won’t see you come to any harm. Not
from me or anyone else.”
    His words were strangely