Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) Read Online Free PDF

table and held it in front of her body. “Um. If you mean the Hobbs, then they are back at home, I think. Although I wouldn’t really call them assistants as such .”
    Hades blinked as she brought the teacup to her plump rosy lips and took a sip of tea whilst keeping her eyes on him above the cup’s rim. He almost groaned as her eyelashes swept down and back up again.
    “Put the tea down,” he ordered. She was a witch. He knew it. This was how she had slain all those men. 
    With a gasp, she turned back towards the table, fumbling with the tea cup. It fell from her hands and tumbled down her dress to the floor, smashing across the stone flags into hundreds of tiny pieces.
    “Oh I’m so terribly sorry!”
    Henry watched, time slowing as the Viper rose unsteadily from her chair and started towards the broken china, the folds of her cloak parting to reveal her dress beneath.
    “Enough!” He stooped and caught her under her elbows before she could pick up any more of the broken tea cup. She looked up at him, her brilliant blue eyes wide, the barest form of moisture tinging the bottom of her eyelashes.
    Hades took a deep breath and looked away, his hands tingling as he continued to gently hold the warm, smooth vulnerable skin of her underarm.
    “Carter.”
    “Yes sir?”
    “Please take Miss Diana away and put her in one of our guest rooms until she tells me everything she knows.”
    “Yes sir.”
    Slowly Hades let go, immediately stuffing his bereft hands in the pockets of his undercoat. He stared at the ovens as Carter drew the Viper away.
    He turned sharply as a small audible snort rent the air behind him. Carter gave a groan like cough from the stairs as the Viper pushed her head defiantly back round the kitchen door, all traces of tears gone.
    She touched a hand to her spectacles and glared at him with a look that would have caused a phoenix to burst into flames. “My name is not Diana!”
     
     

CHAPTER 4
     
    Melissa watched dully as wild rain splattered against the glass of her bedroom. The room was warmer than her attic bedroom in Bayswater, and much more sumptuously furnished. If being a prisoner meant living this sort of lifestyle, Melissa would gladly have changed places with the Viper for just a few days.
    Perhaps the rain would help the seedlings she had planted with Mr. Hobbs in an effort to rejuvenate the garden that Eliza had ravaged with burning oil as her parting gift. That was if the earl ever allowed her to leave. Melissa shivered as she put a hand to the cold glass of the window. The close proximity of the powerful man was very unsettling, even though she hadn’t seen him since her measly act of defiance through the kitchen door. To think that they thought that she was dangerous!
    She had been terrified as she walked into St. Giles. And waiting by the stark St Giles cross that paid gloomy homage to death had unnerved her even further, reminding her of what a precarious position she was in. Of course it hadn’t helped that she had mistakenly put on her cracked brass spectacles instead of her silver ones which were in the pocket of her skirts, too distracted and frightened by the note that one of her many customers had given her.
    ‘Bring thirty thousand pounds to the cross in St. Giles tomorrow at noon. Bring the book if you have it. Otherwise prepare to face a fate worse than you have ever known.’
    She had carried nothing in her hand—how could she have done? She had no money. And all the books her father had written on flora and fauna had been given to the butcher by Eliza to pay his bill after the coalman debacle. Of course, she had one book, but that was one that she had written since from memory to replace those Eliza had given away.
    Eliza. Melissa sighed, glancing cursorily at the opulence of the bedroom around her and looked out through the glass again, drawing her hand away from the cold pane. Never again would she be bent or controlled to do the cursed woman’s bidding, or