Lily Read Online Free PDF

attic, the first door on the left. Go on, now.” Lily was halfway down the hall when Mrs. Howe called out, “And get a cap for that hair by tomorrow or I’ll cut it off!”
    Feeling her way in the deepening dark, Lily had to fight back tears. She muttered, “Damn,” as her elbow struck the wainscot with a sharp crack. She found the steps by stumbling up the first one, barely catching herself before her chin hit the fourth. “Damn,” she said again, holding onto the wall—then stopped, arrested by a sound somewhere above her. A voice? Yes, loud and angry, a man’s voice—and now a terrific muffled thud.
    She climbed the last stair to the first-floor landing and stood still, peering around the corner down the length of a wide, high-ceilinged hall. She made out a door at the far end, broad and grand, and realized it must be the great front door Mrs. Howe had forbidden her to use. Another hall bisected this one halfway to the door; the voices—two now, one raging, one placating—came from the right. She saw two huge shadows lunge in the writhing light from candles in a sconce along the wall, and would have retreated to the dark staircase behind her—but then the first voice came again. The words were garbled, unintelligible, but underneath anger Lily heard the bare, wrenching sound of a wild anguish. The rawness of it pierced something inside her—she found she couldn’t move. Flattening her back against the wall, she held her breath and waited.
    “Jesus God, Cobb, she took him. Why? Why did she take him?”
    Devon Darkwell, Viscount Sandown, the master of Darkstone Manor, shook off his steward’s grip and lurched drunkenly into the relative brightness of the entry hall. Swaying, he stood under the wide, unlit chandelier and drank four swallows of brandy from the crystal decanter in his hand. French brandy, his brother’s smuggled finest; it went down as smooth as warm silk. But tonight something was wrong with it. He’d been drinking steadily since early afternoon and he wasn’t drunk yet. Or not drunk enough.
    Arthur Cobb reached out with his good arm—the other ended in a handless stub at the cuff of his coat—and muttered, “ ‘Ere, now, all’s well, ee’ve no call t’ be swingin’ this about. I’ll just take—”
    Devon jerked away, irritated, and then stared down in bloodshot perplexity at the silver hunting pistol lying in his palm. He couldn’t remember taking it out of his desk drawer. The sight of it exhumed the macabre remains of his vicious meditation. “I wish she weren’t dead,” he rasped, hollow-eyed. “If she weren’t dead, I could kill her.”
    His black-bearded steward stiffened, and reached once more for the gun. Devon’s hand clenched around it harder and he bared his teeth, intent on the chaos of bitterness and violence inside him—when a sound, a soft intake of breath, diverted him. He whirled, facing the darkness, and saw the pale outline of a face, receding.
    “Stop!” The face halted for a second, then retreated again. “Stop, I said!” He took three unsteady steps forward. Was it a woman? “You there, come here,” he commanded. A moment passed. Then the figure approached, unwillingness obvious in every lagging footfall, and he saw that it was a woman, a girl, with dark hair and light eyes. He’d never seen her before.
    She stopped again, and something told Devon she would come no farther now. He fumbled the pistol into his jacket pocket and moved toward her, snatching a candle from the wall bracket as he went. “Who are you?” he demanded when he reached her. He held the candle high and peered at her.
    Lily clutched her hands together, quelling the impulse to fling them up like a shield between herself and this staring giant of a man who smelled of drink and looked capable of anything. His straight brown hair hung to his collar, wild and disheveled; his coat was rumpled, his white stock untied and wine-stained. He had a dangerous face, and the expression in