The Lady of Secrets Read Online Free PDF

Seraphine demanded. “Mayhap the Tillet girl’s demon has carried everyone else off as well.”
    “Don’t say that! Not even in jest. It is more likely that everyone has retreated indoors for fear of the approaching storm.”
    Meg sought to reassure herself as much as Seraphine, but a part of her could not believe it. These Breton coastal people were hardy folk, accustomed to dealing with rough weather. They would not be driven to bolt their doors against the mere prospect of a little rain, thunder, and blustering wind.
    Meg could think of only one thing that might have sent such a redoubtable breed of people into cowering inside their cottages: the fear that a witch walked among them.
    Meg prayed it was not so. She had hoped to deal quietly with the Tillet girl’s claims of bewitchment, resolve the matter before the rumors and panic had time to spread. The kind of panic that could result in innocent women being accused of witchcraft, tortured, and hung.
    As she and Seraphine rounded a bend in the lane, Megspotted the inn sign creaking in the wind. The Laughing Dolphin was a modest hostelry that seldom saw much custom beyond local travelers. But on this somber dark afternoon, a stranger lingered in the doorway.
    The man looked as out of place in this rugged fishing village as a satin doublet would have appeared strung on a wash line of coarse homespun shirts. Despite the dust that clung to his boots and the short cape that hung off one shoulder, there was a quality about his garments that marked him as a gentleman.
    He was of no more than medium height, his figure far from imposing, but something in his self-assured manner gave him the appearance of being taller. A fine-looking man, Meg could not help noting. Some might even have said a beautiful one, with his lean chiseled features and smooth-shaven complexion, rather pale for one traveling during the summer months. The breeze stirred the feathers of his toque set upon waves of golden brown hair. His head tipped up as he studied the darkening sky.
    Seraphine let out a low whistle between her teeth. “So who is this fine young buck?”
    “I would have no idea,” Meg murmured, uneasily. “It is rather unusual for such a visitor to pass through a remote village like Pernod.”
    “You are afraid he might be the devil you have been summoned to exorcise? He looks far too pretty for that.”
    Meg glared up at her friend, but stopped as a sudden thought struck her. “Good lord, ’Phine. You don’t think your husband might have sent him?”
    Seraphine looked taken aback by the notion before giving a derisive laugh. “What! Monsieur le Comte engage someone to find his errant wife and drag her back to Castelnau by thehair of her head? Gerard would not have the spine. And I doubt my dear husband wants me back any more than I desire to return to him.”
    Meg could not agree with that, but she knew it would be of little use to argue the point. She had tried ever since Seraphine had arrived on Faire Isle five months ago.
    “Moreover, that man isn’t even French,” Seraphine continued. “Very likely he is English.”
    “How can you possibly know that?”
    “Only look at the square cut of his doublet. No self-respecting French gallant would venture abroad wearing a garment so lacking in style.”
    She and Meg had been speaking in low tones as they neared the inn, but the stranger’s attention riveted upon them. He straightened from the doorway and he stared. Meg felt the full weight of his gaze, hard, assessing, and far too intimate.
    Meg shrank deeper inside her hood, her cheeks burning. “What business would an English gentleman have here in Pernod? And why does he stare so?”
    “I don’t know. Perhaps I should ask him and give him a lesson in manners.”
    To Meg’s dismay, Seraphine halted, staring back at the stranger. With a challenging lift of her chin, she drew back her cloak, resting her hand upon the hilt of the rapier strapped to her side.
    “Seraphine!