The Cursed One Read Online Free PDF

She shuddered; then she noticed something else there on the
floor. Amelia tucked the nightshirt under one arm, bent, and picked it up. It looked like an animal claw. She quickly dropped it.
    Upon entering the adjoining room, she saw Mora just rising from her position upon the floor next to her patient.
    â€œGot him fixed up, I think,” the girl said to her.
    Amelia placed her candle on the stand next to the bed and unfolded the nightshirt. “This will have to do for the time being,” she said.
    Wulf took the garment from her and put his muscled arms through the sleeves first. Amelia was staring again.
    â€œThank you for taking … for removing the man. I thought I should look at him just to assure myself he wasn’t Robert, but then—”
    â€œWhat?” Wulf paused in his task of pulling the nightshirt over his head. “What did you just say?”
    â€œThe body, you moved it … didn’t you?”
    He pulled the nightshirt over his head and was off the bed in an instant. The broken door didn’t survive his wrenching it open and fell partway off the hinges. Shocked, Amelia simply watched him. She heard him in the next room, heard him curse, then the sound of running feet in the hallway.
    But wait, it was not running feet she heard in the hallway. It was the sound of horses running. The stable!
    Amelia opened her door and ran into the hallway. She just caught a glimpse of the white nightshirt Gabriel wore moving down the stairs. She glanced around her room and spotted his pistol still lying on the chest.
    â€œStay here,” she instructed Mora, rushing over to
grab the pistol. Amelia ran from the room and downstairs. Lord Gabriel had left the front doors standing wide, and how he managed to unbolt everything and still be ahead of her, Amelia had no idea. Dust coated the damp air outside, and she coughed. Someone grabbed her from behind.
    â€œWhat are you doing out here?”
    Amelia had almost screamed; now she sagged against him with relief. “The pistol. I thought you might need it.”
    Wulf reached around front of her and took the heavy pistol from her hand. Amelia wanted a moment longer to simply lean against him. He felt solid, strong, and represented safety.
    â€œSomeone’s run the horses off,” he said. “I intend to go to the stable and find out whom. Go back into the house. Bolt the doors.”
    Whatever else her mind would or would not accept tonight, Lord Gabriel represented safety to Amelia. He had rescued her from an impostor bent on defiling her. She didn’t want Lord Gabriel out of her sight. “I’ll go with you,” she insisted.
    When he sighed, his warm breath brushed her ear. She shivered. “I haven’t time to watch your back and mine both,” he argued. “Do as I say, woman.”
    In shock, half-inebriated, whatever she was, Amelia was not the sort to tolerate that kind of talk from a man. “Woman”? Had he called her “woman”? “I hardly do as I’m told by men who are related to me,” she informed him. “I certainly don’t take orders from complete strangers. I’ll wager I’m safer tagging along with a big, strapping man such as yourself rather than cowering in the house with a frightened girl.”

    His hands were warm through the thin fabric of Amelia’s robe when he turned her to face him. “That ‘girl’ is showing more sense than you are. She at least knows to stay put and not to argue with her …”
    She blinked up at him. It was dark, but a half-moon made his features readable. “With her what?” she asked. “Her betters? Is that what you were going to say?”
    Wulf didn’t answer. He shook his head and muttered something along the lines of “God save us from independent women.” He moved past her. “Do whatever you want then. It’s your neck.”
    Amelia reconsidered now that he’d