Eve Silver Read Online Free PDF Page A

had definitely swayed them. And despite the rumors that painted him a monster, Lord Anthony’s employ, the chance to care for his son, had appealed to Emma far more than Mr. Moulton’s rancid embrace.
    “I came looking for nothing,” she said at length. “But hoping for a way to love a child the way I was loved.”
     Cookie met her gaze, shadows and worry beating back the warmth of her smile. “The poor mite has had a hard go of it. But you might well do, Emma Parrish. You might last longer than the others.”
    There was something is Cookie’s tone that made Emma flinch. “The others?”
    “Twelve governesses in four years. With His Lordship so exacting, they hardly survive a few weeks before they're gone.”
    “Hardly survive a few weeks?” Emma echoed, her thoughts spiraling back to Cookie's earlier reference to Lord Anthony returning home drenched in blood. Surely she couldn’t mean—
    “Then they’re gone.” Cookie snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”
    Gone? “Where do they go?” Emma whispered.
    “Don't know where they go, dear. But His Lordship makes sure they never come back.”

    o0o
    Early the next morning, Emma watched pale fingers of light creep past the lace curtains of her window to trace patterns on the wooden floor. The fire had long since died, the gray ashes lending no warmth to the chilly room. But a cold hearth was no novelty. Her aunts had seen no need to waste coal on Emma, and her tiny room in the attic of their home had been frightfully cold in winter and dreadfully hot in summer. By comparison, her current chamber was a luxury.
    Raising her hand, she stifled a wide yawn. Tormented by Cookie's words late into the night, her thoughts before she had fallen asleep had been filled with hazy visions, terrible imaginings of Lord Anthony, his hands covered in blood, a faceless governess lying murdered at his feet. Then the woman had become Delia, broken at the bottom of the stairs.
    Slumber had been long in coming.
    She tossed back the counterpane and climbed from the bed. Shivering, she crossed to the pitcher of clean water that Cookie had sent up with her the night before. Carefully doling out tooth powder onto her brush, she acknowledged that she felt a little foolish for having let her imagination and the exhaustion of her long journey influence her thoughts and observations the previous night.
    Don't know where they go, dear. But His Lordship makes sure they never come back. She shook her head as she thought of all the possible sinister scenarios she had attributed to that statement. Ridiculous. She was a sensible girl, not prone to wild exaggeration or fanciful musing. Surely the exhaustion of her long journey was to blame for her morbid thoughts. Obviously the previous governesses had not suited, and they had moved on.
    After donning her dress and pinning her hair in a neat coil, Emma followed the same path she had taken to the kitchen once before, making only a single wrong turn along the way. As she paused, uncertain of her way, a chill slithered along her spine. She spun, her gaze darting about, searching the dusty shadows.
    A dark premonition gripped her, making her blood pound thick and heavy through her veins. Someone was watching her. She could feel his eyes upon her, sense a threatening and malicious intent. Tamping down the urge to flee this deserted corner of the house, to run pell-mell through these unfamiliar halls, she turned a slow circle, every sense attuned. A mad flight would only serve to lose her way even more than it was already.
    She squinted into the darkness. There. She heard it. The rough sound of a breath drawn and released, again and again, mingling with the wild and wretched pounding of her own heart.
    Mrs. Bolifer’s instructions sounded in her mind: down a second flight, along the hall, down the back stairway to the right …. Resolutely Emma turned away from whatever lurked in the dust-laden shadows, away from the whisper of evil that crawled,