Touch of Rogue Read Online Free PDF Page B

origins explained some of its properties. He might try again later to discern how the ore was discovered and by what magic of metallurgy someone had fashioned it into the dagger.
    But now he turned his attention to the hilt. It should tell him about the people through whose hands the dagger had passed. Before he reached for the haft, he settled into the desk chair, deciding it wiser to attempt such a melding while seated.
    Jacob held his hand close, letting the haft speak to him. The hilt’s composition was much less exotic than the blade. Common, in fact, but for the inlaid precious metals and gemstones. The jewels were silent to his gift.
    If he needed to, he’d take the dagger to his cousin Viola. She had the same affinity for gems that Jacob did for metals, a quirky inherited ability that touched only a few of his relations as far as he knew.
    His brother didn’t possess it, he was certain. Jerome was a stolid sort, thoroughly grounded in the material world. The idea of perception beyond the normal senses made the earl scoff. Viola suspected some of their other cousins might have inherited the enhanced gift of touch, but the ability was freakish enough that none of them wanted it noised about. It wasn’t something the Prestons discussed often, even among themselves.
    But Jacob suspected the metals in this dagger would tell him all he needed to know without bothering Viola about the gemstones. With grim determination, he closed his fist around the hilt.
    The old man leaned down, peering through a glass that rendered his eye bulbous and out-sized as he gazed at the weapon. He smiled, the satisfied acquisitive smile of the dedicated collector. He stroked the dagger on his massive desk, fingering the flat of the sleek blade as gently as if it were his lover’s skin.
    Then he wrapped his fingers around the haft and hefted its weight, making a few practice cuts in the air. He rose and cavorted about the room, an aged pirate with cutlass drawn. His years dropped away and his face lit up like a boy’s on Christmas morn.
    Then his face changed. His heavy silver brows beetled as the hand that held the blade began quaking. The tip of the dagger turned back, bending his wrist toward him.
    Eyes wide, he extended his arm, trying to lock his elbow, but the joint gave way. He grasped the hilt with both hands, but the blade drew inexorably toward his chest. The man’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. His lips locked in a rictus of terror. A vein bulged on his forehead, straining with the effort of holding back the dagger.
    He stumbled backward into his desk chair and lost his grip on the hilt. The blade zinged into his chest with the force of a cannon shot.

    “Sir, please, sir. You must wake up.” Fenwick’s voice drifted down to Jacob as if he was lying at the bottom of a deep well. A hand clamped on his shoulder and gave him a shake. “You’re bleeding, sir, all over the carpet. Mrs. Trott will be fit to be tied if I don’t get that stain cleaned up before she sees it.”
    Jacob pried open one eye. He was vaguely aware that he was splayed on the floor instead of seated at his desk, with no notion of how he’d come there.
    Fenwick’s homely honest face peered down at him, pinched with concern.
    “Ah, that’s the ticket, sir. Let’s get you up and see what’s what. Mind the blade there. No hiding the rip in the rug, I suppose. That’ll put Mrs. Trott on a proper tear and no mistake.”
    The dagger was standing upright near Jacob’s armpit, its point buried in the Persian rug. Fenwick was right about how Jacob’s housekeeper would react. Mrs. Trott’s parents had given her the unlikely Christian name of Waitstill, but she wasn’t the sort to suffer fools in silence. His housekeeper would have a conniption when she discovered the new defect in what she considered to be “her” carpet. In fact, all of Jacob’s town house was Mrs. Trott’s domestic domain, and for the most part, he was pleased to