The Devil Earl Read Online Free PDF Page A

opening skies and shouted to her sister. “Run!” she yelled and, grasping hands, they rushed for the path in a headlong race against the oncoming deluge.
    Unfortunately, they did not win, and by the time they reached the cottage, they were soaked to the skin and shivering, their clothes spattered with mud and their spirits dampened.
    “What a horrid man!” Phoebe moaned for the millionth time as she wrung out her stockings and hung them up to dry in front of the fire. “Rude, ghastly creature! I can well understand why Mr. Penhurst does not wish to see him. Why, he looked as evil as…” Obviously, having seen nothing as scary as Ravenscar in all her sheltered sixteen years, Phoebe was at a loss for words. Finally, she gave up and conceded that even the abbey itself was not half so frightful as its owner.
    Prudence listened absently to Phoebe’s complaints as she finished with her own toilet. She had hung out her wet clothes and changed into a warm gown, but she refused the hot soup that Cook was pushing upon them. She was too eager to get back to her desk and begin writing.
    For, despite the failure of her scheme to enter Wolfinger, Prudence had been rewarded with new inspiration—Ravenscar himself. To her, he was not frightening or gruesome, but thrilling and alluring beyond anything she had ever known. After meeting him, she knew just how her villain would look and act, and she could not wait to put him to paper.
    Her pulse leaping with excitement, Prudence sat down to pattern him after the Devil Earl’s descendant.

Chapter Three
    “W ell, you have cut quite a swath, have you not?” Sebastian asked, in that cool, detached tone of his, and James cringed.
    The earl had barely taken the time to remove his greatcoat and nod to the housekeeper before dragging James after him into the library with that imperious gaze of his. As long as James could remember, his brother had dictated to him in that cold manner, and, lately, he felt he had stomached quite enough of it.
    “Please interrupt me, if I fail to include all your exploits in my recitation,” Sebastian said, in a sarcastic tone that set James’s blood to boiling. “Let’s see…You were turned out of Oxford Then, instead of coming home to Yorkshire to inform me of this turn of events, you went to London and fell in with companions I can only describe as creatures of the lowest sort. You spent several weeks wenching and drinking and gaming in the worst of hells, losing all your money, totting up bills of every imaginable variety, and finally handing your vowels to the basest of moneylenders, thereby compounding your problems tenfold.”
    Sebastian paused long enough to pin him with a piercing gray stare, and James had to resist the urge to squirm. “Am I giving a fair account?”
    “Yes, sir,” James muttered through gritted teeth. Why did his brother always seem so deadly and yet so controlled? It was wholly unfair. He had gone to London with the hopes of acquiring a dash and sophistication that would put him on a footing with Sebastian. Instead…
    “And then, rather than notify me of these new doings, since I might well be expected to foot the bills for your wild extravagances and your gambling losses, you turn tail and run to hide out here in Cornwall—” Sebastian’s hard gaze bored into him, while James swallowed thickly, for he had never meant to “—like a coward.”
    The accusation made James’s temper snap. “I am not a coward!” he shouted. “I came here to think, to decide what to do! I only expected to stay a day or two before…” he finished lamely.
    “Before what, James? I am curious to see just how you planned to extricate yourself from this mess,” Sebastian said, and James realized that his arrogant brother was not so composed as he seemed. A muscle in the earl’s cheek jumped, giving away his anger.
    Swamped with remorse at the enormity of mistakes so grave as to make Sebastian’s legendary control slip, James hung his