Devil Takes A Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

covertly investigating the fateful night of the fire that had taken his family from him. He had run from his guilt for a decade, sailing from one end of the globe to the other, but on the ten-year anniversary of his family’s deaths, he had resolved himself to examine every last detail of that night, something he had not been able to face as a shattered youth.
    It had not taken long before he had begun to notice that many of the facts about the fire did not add up. Since then, he had chased down every lead, had spent a fortune in bribe money, and had collected a trunkload of documents on the case—newspaper obituaries, indeed, full background investigations of every person who had died in the fire, interviews with the intimidated fire official, depositions from a few useful witnesses, logbooks from the stagecoach companies whose vehicles had traveled that stretch of the road that night. Everything he could lay his hands on.
    Unraveling the knot thread by meticulous thread, Dev had finally traced his way through the disappearance of Ginny Highgate, aka Mary Harris, to the Horse and Chariot Club, and it was there that he had met a brick wall. It seemed the murdered redhead was the club’s best-guarded secret.
    To learn it, Dev had spent the past six months infiltrating the group, slowly attempting to gain their trust, even though doing so was akin to playing roulette with his life, for they knew full well who he was.
    Why they hadn’t killed him already, he was not exactly sure; he could only conclude that, so far, they had bought into his highly convincing facade as a dissipated rogue of the first order. He made them believe he was such a thoughtless pleasure-seeker that it had never crossed his mind that his family’s destruction was anything but the tragic accident that it had been ruled.
    They surely suspected him, he mused, but he supposed they let him near because it helped them to feel that they were keeping an eye on
him
. The thing required the utmost finesse, but Dev was prepared to chance it, for the prize was the one thing he craved more than anything else in the world: peace.
    Answers. There could be no peace until he had answers. Why? How? All he really wanted was for life to make sense, but it didn’t and it wouldn’t. Not until he had the answers to the question, nay, the furious demand, that had burned in his brain for twelve long years and had turned the heart in him to ashes.
    What had really happened on that terrible night his family had been taken from him? Who was to blame? If there was one shred of hope that there was someone, anyone else that he could blame instead of himself, he was willing to go to any lengths to find it.
    By God, if it cost him his life and every last penny of his inheritance, he would find the truth, lay hold of the answers—answers that only his enemies could give him. And when he had the truth in his grasp, when he finally knew who had set that blaze, he would wreak vengeance on them in an orgy of violence the likes of which they had never seen.
    Rising once more to his full height, he moved restlessly away from the painting of Ginny Highgate and sent Dalloway a brisk nod. “Right. I’ll take it.” Charles looked at him in alarm. “However, there is the question of price,” he conceded. “It’s much too high. Charles?”
    He left his solicitor to negotiate with Mr. Dalloway and sauntered back out to the foyer, where he leaned in the battered doorway and stared out at the frozen swamp, feeling moody and pensive with the return of old memories.
    Ben joined him, his large brown eyes full of sensitive intelligence behind his rain-flecked spectacles as he searched Dev’s face. “Are you all right?”
    He shrugged, lost in his thoughts. Folding his arms across his chest, Dev cast a jaundiced eye over the ragged gardens. “I look at this place and see something of myself,” he said, his voice low, edged with