The Perils of Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page B

push her toward Croker and her new life.
    She reached for a broom, but behind her the chair creaked; she turned her head swiftly just as Colin Eversea was turning his toward her. Her narrowed eyes met his bright pale ones in that sliver of sunbeam.
    He went oddly motionless then, as if the very act of turning had winded him.
    Beautiful .
    Colin knew this definitively at last, and it made no sense, given the algebra of her features. It was some thing his gut told him, rather than his eyes. And some how the impression was so singular and total he needed a moment of stillness to absorb it.
    And then the woman used a broom handle to slide the crate over the window, and they were in total darkness.
    Just as he worked his wrists free from the last of his bindings. He touched one hand to the other, surrepti tiously, one old friend greeting another.
    He heard a soft metallic clank—the sound of the handle of a lamp being lifted—followed by the strike of a fl int, and then a feeble light fl ickered and pulsed into the room. The small lamp propped on the barrel illu minated a circle just large enough to encompass himself and her, and only just lit the things beyond that circle, including the stairway.
    She’d palmed the watch again and had just begun to hold it up to the lamp to review the time when the sound of a key rattled in the lock.
    The woman whipped toward it so quickly, Colin felt the breeze of her skirts.
    She went very still. Her surprise was palpable, and he could very nearly hear the hum of her mind as she reassessed her circumstances. Since her movements had thus far been obviously timed and precise and planned, this troubled him.
    Though he still hadn’t the faintest idea if she were friend or foe.
    He froze as the doorknob turned and the door opened. Slowly, inexorably, with the slightest of creaks. In came an expanding wedge of sunlight, a gust of air . . . and a single footstep.
    There was a brief pause.
    And then another footstep as their visitor committed to entering the room.
    The door began to creak shut under its own weight, but their visitor stopped it with a foot; they heard the soft, dull thud of an inserted boot. The rectangle of light remaining at the entrance threw a bulky, cloaked, and hatted shadow against the wall.
    The short hairs on the back of Colin’s neck rose. He tensed the muscles of his thighs and slowly, slowly, began to rise from the chair, which mercifully didn’t creak at all. The woman didn’t turn toward him; her eyes were fixed on the doorway.
    “Greenway?” The shadow spoke. Hoarse and bari tone. A disguised voice, Colin would have guessed.
    The woman said nothing, but Colin heard a whisper of sound. His eyes sought the source: he glanced down and saw her hands moving subtly in her skirts.
    “Madeleine Greenway?” The hoarse voice seemed to need clarifi cation.
    The woman’s uncertainty froze her. Nevertheless, at last:
    “Mission accomplished.” Her voice was low and steady.
    The shadow shifted slightly, as Colin suspected it would. It had needed only to properly locate Madeleine to carry out its mission.
    And Colin threw his body at her legs just as the pistol exploded.
    Chapter 3
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    he went down hard just as a sickening crunch of wood told them the ball had struck the pillar just feet away from them. Splinters sprayed like shrapnel; Colin threw his palms over his face, felt thin spikes of wood strike off his hands and shoulders. Something metallic skittered across the floor. He uncovered his eyes and saw on the dusty floorboards the unmistak able outline of a pistol.
    Of course she would have a pistol. She must have dropped it when he’d thrown her to the fl oor.
    Madeleine Greenway had rolled onto her side and was propped on one elbow, her hand outstretched for the pistol. But his arms were longer. He stretched and closed his hand over it—a decent stick, this one, and where in God’s name had she hidden it on her person?— rolled onto his stomach, unlocked