ROOK AND RAVEN: The Celtic Kingdom Trilogy Book One Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sebastian’s mother has never spread about all that happened before I left.  Every day for seven years I’ve expected her to bring this world of mine down by labeling me her son’s jilted and cast off whore,” the bitterness was too raw in her voice and she resented that.
    “My sweet, how little you understand.  Not to be rude, but you just don’t comprehend conniving people.  She’ll never tell even if she did guess.  You are the daughter of a Peer of the Realm and what he did was not good ton . If they knew the real reason you fled your home and ended on the stage his name would be a byword.  You were not some loose kneed milkmaid after all,” he paused for a moment, “You would look darling in a milkmaid costume, I will have to ponder a plot line I think.”
    “I’ll have you know that being a milkmaid doesn’t mean one isn’t virtuous Sean!”  She reprimanded him lightly. “Besides, he’s a man , he can do what he pleases without society so much as blinking. Milkmaid or lady the fault falls on the woman.  I’m an actress now, whatever I was before.”
    “I think that even the ton would look down on a man who seduced and left a girl almost as soon as her father died.  A man, by the way, who had arranged an understanding with you.  You were engaged for goodness sake! That awful woman, as you call her, will not take any chances.  She would move heaven and earth to avoid her precious being thought of poorly by their kind.  She’ll never speak of your relationship, trust me.”  He continued to brush out her hair as he spoke.
    “Earl or no, he is still liable to public opinion.  Your public would hate anyone who tried to hurt you, or has hurt you.  Not to say there aren’t some jealous tabbies out there but, you were an innocent and in mourning too.  They don’t know him, only his rather wicked reputation with an assortment of foreign women.  He had better watch his step.  I have half a mind to write a play about it all, changing the names, but making clear exactly which lord plays the villain.  He’ll have street urchins pelting him with rotten fruit.” As he knew it would, that last statement made her laugh.  Her sense of the ridiculous was one of the things he liked best about her.
    And with those words he began to help her with her laces as he had since Caroline, Jessy’s dresser, had gone on her wedding trip.  No one thought ill of their relationship and its intimacies.  All the theater going world knew that, in the vernacular, Sean was a molly.  More politely one would say he preferred the company of men.  So, after one look at Sebastian, Earl of Redsayle, he knew he was looking at one of the most desirable and dangerous men to ever grace London.  
    Too bad the man only preferred women or Sean would have a mind to toy with him and break his heart like Redsayle had broken Jessy’s.  He’d never heard the man liked to play with both skirts and trousers or he could do it too, he thought.  Sean, while not overly conceited, was well aware and confident of his looks and skills.  He’d needed to be to compete in the London theater world. 
    Humility, in his experience, did not pay or play well.
    Now that was a daydream, Sean smiled to himself.  Revenge for a friend and pleasure for himself he sighed.  No wonder Jessy was still not over the man.  Oh, she insisted she was, but who could be after a taste of that tall, dark and dangerous?
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Jessy was down to her chemise when a firm knock sounded on the door, and without waiting for a response, a tall form stepped into the room.
    “I don’t recall saying enter my lord,” she looked coolly at the intruder.
    “My lord this is not the green room, but a lady’s dressing room.  I think that Mrs. Powers would prefer you wait outside,” Sean had straightened up with a steely look in his eye.  Tall and broad shouldered Sean did not cut a figure other