In Love With a Wicked Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

her?”
    “Richard, it is Mamma,” she said evenly. “One does not so much expect her, but rather simply battens down the hatches and watches the horizon darken.”
    With that, Kate touched her crop to her hat brim, and wheeled Athena about to urge her into a canter. Through sheer force of will, she had not let Richard see the anger that still roiled inside her. Setting aside the cruelty of Nancy’s insult, Kate knew there was no one she’d sooner welcome into the family than Richard. But the couple might well have to wait until Nancy’s majority.
    Instead, Nancy was attempting to force the issue. But if she could not give a fig for her family’s wishes, thought Kate angrily, could she not, at the very least, think of Richard’s good name? He was the village rector —and Nancy had tempted him into a situation where any passing villager might have seen.
    Driven by temper and, yes, by the hot sting of her sister’s insult, Kate gave Athena her head. They flew across the field, tossing up divots of turf almost silently. The Shearns had turned their wagon and were raking up the last of the hay. Intent on her errand—and a little blinded, perhaps, by temper—Kate passed by with merely a nod.
    Reaching the main road, she leaned over Athena’s haunches and sent her sailing over the fence and through the wide gap in the hedge. And in the next moment, all hell erupted.
    In a roadway that should have been empty, a massive dark shadow loomed on her right. Athena reared in surprise. The great, black beast barreling down the hill reared, too, pawing so close Kate felt the hoof breeze past her forehead.
    The rider cursed, and fought for control. Too late. The hard, wheeling jerk he forced upon his rearing mount sent him flying from the saddle. His head struck the moss-covered millstone that sat like a massive, immovable toad at the intersection.
    Kate screamed, kicked loose her stirrup and leapt, leaving Athena’s reins to dangle. Falling to her knees in the grass, she needed but a glance to see blood was streaming from the man’s temple, his eyes open yet sightless.
    Terrified, Kate turned and rushed for the fence, hurling herself half over. “ Shearn! ” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “ Shearn! Bring the wagon!”
    “ O H, DEAR!” N ANCY gingerly set down her basin of steaming water by the massive mahogany bed. “Oh, Kate! I’m so sorry. Poor man! I ought not have goaded you.”
    “No, you ought not,” Kate admitted. “But the fault is mine; I was careless.”
    “Yours?” Nancy gave a little sniffle. “ You are never careless.”
    “I wish you were right.” Willing her hand not to shake, Kate stroked the heavy, gold-brown hair off the man’s forehead. “Here, give me the sponge.”
    Nancy blithered on between damp sniffles about her guilt and regret and something about Richard being angry enough to throttle her as Kate dunked the sponge and wrung it out, assessing the best way to attack the drying blood that had streamed down his face and ruined his shirt.
    The injured man lay now in Stephen’s bedchamber at Bellecombe, directly across the passageway from Kate’s. From the time Ike and Tom Shearn had gingerly lifted him from the verge until the moment they’d settled him onto the bed, the man had made no sound. More worrisome still, when Kate had clambered into the hay wagon to close his eyes, they had not so much as twitched beneath his lids. Nor did they now.
    “Kate . . . is he going to die?” murmured Nancy, her eyes searching the man’s face.
    Kate paused, twisting about on the bed to lean over the man. “He’s not going to die,” she said firmly. But looking at the man’s pale, strikingly handsome face, Kate was reminded of her brother, who had lingered months after his fall.
    But that was different. Stephen had fallen from a great height. His spine had been badly twisted, if not broken. It had been terrible. The panic began to rise again, and Kate forced it down.
    Maintain calm ,