Devil's Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

rasping. Fifteen painful minutes later, the
dry rattle ceased. An unearthly silence filled the cottage; even the storm was
still. Honoria closed her eyes and silently uttered a prayer. Then the wind
rose, mournfully keening, nature's chant for the dead.
    Opening her eyes, Honoria watched as Devil laid his
cousin's hands across his chest. Then he sat on the pallet's edge, eyes fixed
on the pale features that would not move again. He was seeing his cousin alive
and well, laughing, talking. Honoria knew how the mind dealt with death. Her
heart twisted, but there was nothing she could do. Sinking back in the chair,
she left him to his memories.
    She must have dozed off. When next she opened her
eyes, he was crouched before the hearth. The candle had guttered; the only
light in the room was that thrown by the flames. Half-asleep, she watched as he
laid logs on the blaze, banking it for the night.
    During their earlier conversation, she'd kept her eyes
on his face or the flames; now, with the firelight sculpting his arms and
shoulders, she looked her fill. Something about all that tanned male skin had
her battling a fierce urge to press her fingers to it, to spread her hands
across the warm expanse, to curve her palms about hard muscle.
    Arms crossed, hands safely clutching her elbows, she shivered.
    In one fluid motion he rose and turned. And frowned.
"Here." Reaching past her, he lifted his soft jacket from the table
and held it out.
    Honoria stared at it, valiantly denying the almost
overwhelming urge to focus, not on the jacket, but on the chest a yard behind
it. She swallowed, shook her head, then dragged her gaze straight up to his
face. "No—you keep it. It was just that I woke up—I'm not really
cold." That last was true enough; the fire was throwing steady heat into
the room.
    One black brow very slowly rose; the pale green eyes
did not leave her face. Then the second brow joined the first, and he shrugged.
"As you wish." He resumed his seat in the old carved chair, glancing
about the cottage, his gaze lingering on the blanket-shrouded figure on the
bed. Then, settling back, he looked at her. "I suggest we get what sleep
we can. The storm should have passed by morning."
    Honoria nodded, immensely relieved when he spread his
jacket over his disturbing chest. He laid his head against the chairback, and
closed his eyes. His lashes formed black crescents above his high cheekbones;
light flickered over the austere planes of his face. A strong face, hard yet
not insensitive. The sensuous line of his lips belied his rugged jaw; the fluid
arch of his brows offset his wide forehead. Wild locks of midnight black framed
the whole—Honoria smiled and closed her eyes. He should have been a pirate.
    With sleep clouding her mind, her body soothed by the
fire's warmth, it wasn't hard to drift back into her dreams.
    Sylvester Sebastian Cynster, sixth Duke of St. Ives,
known as That Devil Cynster to a select handful of retainers, as Devil Cynster
to the
ton
at large and simply as Devil to his closest friends,
watched his wife-to-be from beneath his long lashes. What, he wondered, would
his mother, the Dowager Duchess, make of Honoria Prudence Anstruther-Wetherby?
The thought almost made him smile, but the dark pall that hung over his mind
wouldn't let his lips curve. For Tolly's death there was only one answer; justice
would be served, but vengeance would wield the sword. Nothing else would
appease him or the other males of his clan. Despite their reckless
propensities, Cynsters died in their beds.
    But avenging Tolly's death would merely be laying the
past to rest. Today he had rounded the next bend in his own road; his companion
for the next stretch shifted restlessly in the old wing chair opposite.
    Devil watched her settle, and wondered what was
disturbing her dreams. Him, he hoped. She was certainly disturbing him—and he
was wide-awake.
    He hadn't realized when he'd left the Place that
morning that he was searching for a wife; fate