Love at First Bite Read Online Free PDF Page A

country, you'll end up walking on the moors or whatever and dressing unfashionably and dying alone with only an aged housekeeper to note your passing."
    " You have been reading too many novels," Emma said in a damping tone.
    "You'll never know the touch of a man," Jane Campton said thoughtfully. How unexpected! A physical sense of yearning swept through Emma. That was a hard truth to bear.
    Suddenly she wanted to shriek at these silly girls, at Thurston, at the dowagers and the cicisbei and the whist players. She wanted to shriek that they had no meaning in their lives, no love, and that pretending it didn't matter didn't fool anyone. Instead, she pushed past the two young women and bore down upon Richard. He turned in surprise.
    "I have the headache and I'm calling for the carriage, and you may take me home or not as you please," she said, through clenched jaws. If she clenched her jaws she might not scream.
    Richard raised his brows. "I'll call the carriage." He turned to the Countess Lieven, with whom he had been conversing. "Your servant, my lady. Duty calls."
    Emma turned and stalked out of the hall without looking back. Inside she was seething. Davie had done this to her. She was certain he loved her. It had been written in his expression of loss that afternoon at Fairfield House. He had been going to offer for her, until he felt some wretched sense of duty and protectiveness that sent him off to Casablanca without her.
    The whole town had become intolerable and she didn't know whether to cry or shout defiance at the unfairness of it all. Where was all her vaunted calm? Lost. And she didn't know how to get it back.

Chapter Three
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    It was almost dawn. Davie waited in the darkness of the tiny whitewashed house. The windows were covered over with black cloth. Rufford and Fedeyah would be here soon.
    He should leave. The weapons cache must be moved and the food supply replenished. Then he would bring several young men and women for Rufford and Fedeyah when they woke. They drained a little blood from each, as the donors drowsed and smiled, and stored it in two leather sacks. They needed it most when they arrived, wounded, just after dawn. Davie had never seen them return from a night of fighting. But he had seen the results of the battle. The city was buzzing with fear. Twelve decapitated bodies had been found in an alley today. Twelve! The number of Asharti's followers in the city had been growing.
    And they were not as discreet as Rufford and Fedeyah. Human bodies drained of blood were being noticed, even in a city where the poor died on the streets every day. Citizens were leaving if they had the means to do so. Davie dreaded a panic that would send the population of the African metropolis streaming into the desert and certain death by exposure or setting sail for Gibraltar in unsafe craft that would leave them at the mercy of the weather and the sea.
    With the turn of days, he had been lingering longer as dawn approached, tempted to stay. Curiosity killed the cat . Possibly quite literally in this case. Who knew what feral monsters Rufford and Fedeyah became after a night of killing? They never let him into the room where they slept. By the time he returned in the late afternoon, they were sitting in the chosen house, with the remains of the food he had brought scattered over a table, making plans for the night. This campaign was taking a terrible toll on Rufford. The man's grim determination had been slowly turning into a heartsickness that was palpable. And Fedeyah? Davie had never trusted the Arab and couldn't read his face. Fedeyah followed Rufford's orders, just as Davie did, though the Englishman was something like a thousand years younger than the Arab.
    Davie felt he was doing too little, that he was protected from whatever put such a charge on their souls. At the very least he could witness that cost. So he sat, quiet, as the gap around the cloth that covered the window lightened. He laid a