Sinful (Hot Regency Romance Novella) Read Online Free PDF

brother.”
    “My dear, I would never betray you. But if
you wish for my help, you must tell me.”
    But the young woman swept to her feet. “No. I
will do this alone, then.” She spun on her heel and ran for the
door of the shop, shoving the stool she had been sitting on across
the path between the worktables. Estelle jumped up. Her scissors
fell from her lap to clatter on the floor. Her patterns were
whirling in the air, blown off the tables as the girl had raced by.
She clambered over the stool and rushed after the girl, but as she
reached the front of the salon, the door snapped shut in her face
and the bell tinkled madly. She snatched open the door and ran out
into the street.
    The girl had disappeared.
    On a sigh, Estelle went back into her shop,
back to the workroom. Moonlight slanted in through the narrow
windows. Her dress patterns lay all over the floor, battered and
bent. She’d torn one as she’d run over it. If she did not finish
them, she would not have the St. Ives gown completed. Or the two
dresses required by the twins of the Earl of Roydon for their
come-out ball.
    To disappoint clients was to embrace the end
of her business. It would mean her fall back into poverty again,
and this time she would drag her daughter down with her.
    She couldn’t.
    But there could be only one young lady in
England whose brother had just learned he was heir to a peer, and
who might know enough about Bow Street Runners to fall in love with
one.
    Lyan had had a sister. Her name had been
Laura.
    Estelle had never once betrayed the
confidence of any girl who had come to her seeking help for her
elopement. And the young ladies, to her surprise, had kept her
secret. Her role in their marriages was shared by word of mouth,
and just to those girls in the same predicament.
    She had helped girls who had a real reason to
flee—girls for whom a marriage that would ostracize them from their
families was a lesser evil than staying at home.
    Did Laura have reason to flee her brother?
Why did she believe her brother would never let her marry for love?
Was it because he knew what it was like to be betrayed?
    Estelle paced in her workroom. Was it just
because Lyan wanted his sister to move up in the world that he
would refuse the match? Some Bow Street Runners were known to be
motivated more by rewards than by justice, and some were considered
to be as unsavory as the men they hunted. That was the very reason
Lyan had fascinated all of London. He might have a rakish
reputation, but he had always been moral and just.
    It would break his heart if Laura ran away
into a terrible marriage.
    Could she betray him again, break his heart
again, by keeping Laura’s secret?
     
    * * *
     
    Two hours later she was still at work, when a
soft creak sounded overhead, directly above the back of the
workroom. Estelle froze for an instant, her fingers crumpling the
paper pattern she was pinning. She cocked her head to listen,
though it was almost impossible to hear over her pounding heart. It
might be nothing—just Rose out of bed or her exhausted mind playing
tricks—but she couldn’t be sure.
    She put down the piece of fragile paper,
picked up her scissors, and crept upstairs. The door to Rose’s room
was ajar, just as she had left it. It wasn’t her daughter—
    A hand clamped over her mouth and dragged her
into another room—her bedroom. Her shoulders were held back against
something unmovable.
    Estelle knew what it had to be. A male chest.
Panic rose like a wave and she struggled against the arm that was
clamped around her torso like an iron bracket.
    “Easy, my dear. I won’t hurt you.”
    I won’t hurt you. He’d said those
words. Lord Cavell. When he’d tried to assault her here, in her own
bedroom, while Rose slept innocently in the next room. He’d held a
blade to her throat to make her stop fighting and had warned her
not to make a sound. In a sneering, evil voice, he’d warned her she
would not want to wake her daughter. He’d