Seduce Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

had absconded
     with Esme.
    Again Waters shook his head and went back to his starting point.
    “Waters!” Thatcher yelled. “Get over here and hold my place; I’ll count out yours.” He aimed his pistol at Esme. “And you,
     shut up!”
    The man meant it. Even without clear lighting she could see the coldness behind his steely blue eyes.
    Waters, while obviously still a menace, was clearly no match intellectually for a woman of her ilk. Facing him alone, she’d
     easily be able to outsmart him—if not overpower him. Thatcher, on the other hand, had the look of a man fueled by malicious
     intelligence and ambition. He was by far the more threatening of the two.
    She said nothing more for a long while as the men counted and recounted their steps.
    “This is the spot,” Thatcher said. “Dig.”
    They set down their lanterns and picked up shovels.
    This whole ordeal was growing stranger by the moment. Perhaps she really was having some sort of bizarre dream. She’d been
     reading at her desk, and she’d simply fallen asleep and was still sitting in her uncomfortable chair in her little study.
     She couldn’t very well pinch herself because of the current positioning of her arms. So she did the next best thing—she bit
     down on her bottom lip.
    Damnation!
    Not dreaming.
    Of course she hadn’t been dreaming. A dream couldn’t be quite this painful. She’d never held her arms above her head for this
     length of time, and now she knew why. Her shoulders felt as if she were literally holding up the wall, and her muscles burned
     and cramped.
    Another rat chirped and sniffed at her feet and she kicked out again, vaulting this one off to the right. “I still do not
     understand what I am doing here,” she told her captors.
    The men paid her no mind, so she instead turned her energy to thinking of ways she could get herself out of this mess. Perhaps
     if she pretended to have a fit of the vapors, they would come to revive her and she could—
    Could do what? Talk them to death?
    “What are you digging for?” she asked.
    “Pan—,” Waters began, but before he got the word out, Thatcher clipped his shoulder with the shovel. Waters yelped in pain,
     jumping out of the way.
    “Dig more. Talk less,” Thatcher growled.
    Esme’s heart thundered. Could it be? What else started with “pan”?
    Pantaloons. Pantomimes. Well, they couldn’t possibly be digging for either of those.
    Pandora’s box. Here in England. Perhaps the story was true. She’d read about a sixth-century Saxon warlord who supposedly
     purchased the box for his new bride, and then they settled somewhere north of Cornwall. The bride had opened the box and brought
     destruction on the entire village until a priest stole the box and escaped with it.
    It had always been a favorite theory of Esme’s, but she’d never imagined she’d be present when it was found.
    “Who told you Pandora’s box was here?” she asked. “Is it that Raven person you mentioned earlier?”
    “Our employer is none of your concern,” Thatcher said, not bothering to look up from his digging. “Suffice it to say if he
     says the box is here, it’s here.”
    The key! That’s what they’d meant back at her house. They were looking for
her
key. Or rather, her pendant. Her father had given it to her only as a frivolity, a small token he’d picked up in a shop in
     Greece. He’d known she’d enjoy the fact that it had been advertised as the key to Pandora’s box.
    But how would anyone know of her pendant? She’d told very few about the necklace or that lately her research had led her to
     believe that it might, in fact, be authentic. There were the two scholars she corresponded with, but they were mild-mannered,
     academic types. She knew they would never work with villains such as these. Aunt Thea knew, but she’d always believed it to
     be nothing more than a trinket.
    Who else? Esme scoured her mind for some clue. Her sister knew, but they didn’t even speak. Oh,