Etiquette With The Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

beat.
    Bly fanned the cards out once more, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular. “There is something unnatural about her…she’s strange looking.” He cut the deck again, then stacked the cards.
    “Are you talking about the woman who just walked from the train station, dragging a trunk some five miles by herself? Miss Dawson is beautiful, even if a bit waterlogged.”
    Spoken like the true Romeo he was. “Your heart is too easily won, Barnes. That’s half the trouble with you.” With a flick of his wrist, the cards cascaded to his other hand in an arch.
    She was petite and slender—lithe, was a better word. She was not fresh out of the schoolroom but old enough that one could assume she wasn’t interested in marriage. At least he could assume as much. She had the air of a spinster—hopelessness clung to her as tightly as her soaked dress.
    Miss Dawson was striking for her strong features. Her warm golden hair had been pulled back harshly, further accentuating the square angles of her face. She possessed haunting gray eyes that shined the palest of green in the right light. Her nose was short and a tad too wide with a small bump near its bridge. Her brows were slightly darker than her hair and her skin was a creamy white. Her heart-shaped mouth was full and pink. Perfectly pink.
    He hadn’t been able to look away from those lips of hers.
    Dawson, he admitted grudgingly, was at least somewhat pretty by candlelight. He could not speak for her appearance in the light of day. She arrived wet and shivering from the rain, but he guessed she was cold to the core from the way she spoke with a guarded superiority. He expected her to cry off after he explained the present conditions of her employment, but she remained. Both cold and stubborn, he concluded. Possibly pretty and certainly a spinster.
    “You could at least offer her warm water for a bath,” Barnes said, snapping his watch shut and tucking it into his unbuttoned waistcoat pocket. Why he insisted on dressing so formally was beyond Bly. Velvet had no place in a crumbling house.
    Bly fanned the cards from one hand to the other in an attempt to clear his mind of those discomfiting eyes of the new governess. “Why would I do that?”
    “Because it would be kind , Ravensdale. The woman spent the afternoon in the rain walking here. For you .”
    “If you’re so concerned, why don’t you take hot water to her?”
    “I am not her employer.”
    “Fine,” Bly grumbled, setting the cards down and jumping to his feet. “You know,” he said, striding to the door. “I think being stranded in the jungles of India with malaria would be preferable to being stuck here. Burton Hall is hell on Earth.”
    “You should be right at home then, since you’re destined to spend the afterlife there,” Barnes said, laughing by the fire.
    “God damn it all. You’re right.” Bly raked his hands through his hair and grinned. He was at the devil’s door, but that was not a strange place for him to be.
    *
    It had grown late since Clara first arrived. The small room assigned to her was lit with only a few candles. It must have served as the morning parlor at one time. The furniture was draped in white cloth, looking more like ghosts skulking in the shadows. Little light fell through the two windows, rendering the walls a pea shade of green and revealing once-elaborate woodwork, now chipped and peeling. The musty smell in the air lent to the lugubrious tone of the room.
    She traced the length of the limestone mantelpiece and discovered a small, framed image of a little boy. There was no name and with the limited light, she could not make out the particulars. The room held no further clues to the mystery of the Ravensdale family.
    With another shivering breath, Clara struck a match and lit the fireplace. Her employer hadn’t even seen to that small, basic comfort. He had given her some bread and cheese for dinner when he escorted her to the room, but that was all. She doubted