A Bride by Moonlight Read Free

for those grim, hard eyes. So will you? Help me, I mean? If I do . . . well, whatever you ask?”
    He felt that awful combination of desire and disgust shiver through him again. But the woman’s bottom lip was trembling now, and there was no hiding her potent mix of fear and fury.
    “My dear,” he said quietly, “believe me when I say you are desirable. But you play a dangerous game. What could possibly be worth what you’re offering me? Your honor. Your integrity. Would you really taint yourself for mere vengeance?”
    At that, something inside her seemed to collapse, her face softening with grief and her shoulders rolling inward as if she might swoon. “ Oh, God ,” she whispered, one hand going to her mouth.
    Without conscious thought, Napier caught her hard against him. She sagged to his chest on a deep, wretched sob that seemed to have been dredged from a well of despair, her fingers curling into his coat as if clinging to him might keep her from drowning in it. Against all wisdom, he held her to him, one hand set between her shoulder blades.
    Damn it all , he thought.
    Napier had little experience with crying females, but he was not cruel, he hoped. And her tears were those of true hopelessness, without one whit of artifice. Worse, a traitorous part of him wanted to hold her; wanted to draw in her warm, exotic scent and pretend this was not utter madness.
    But it was madness. She seemed to realize it, too, pushing herself suddenly, almost roughly, from his embrace. She whirled about, turning her back and dashing at her eyes with the backs of her hands.
    “Oh, this won’t do!” she rasped, sounding angry with herself. “I have not come all this way merely to turn craven. I cannot. I won’t .”
    Napier felt suddenly awkward—and with his lust diminished, logic was creeping back in. “Ma’am, perhaps you might enlighten me,” he said. “I don’t entirely grasp your interest in the Welham case.”
    She turned, her eyes still shimmering with unshed tears. “Have you never even bothered to read your father’s files, Mr. Napier?” she asked softly. “I’m the youngest daughter of Sir Arthur Colburne, who was ruined—indeed, practically killed —by Mr. Welham.”
    Napier went still inside.
    The horrific mess of a murder case had been his late father’s, yes, but at least a dozen years ago. And Sir Arthur hadn’t been the victim. Indeed, he’d scarcely been involved.
    Still, Napier did vaguely remember a daughter. Ellen? Elinor? She had been the murdered man’s fiancée, but she’d died shortly after the trial. Had there been a younger child? Apparently so. And she was a Miss , not a Mrs. . . .
    Damnation .
    “Miss Colburne,” he said quietly, “all this happened long before I came to work here. I believe Rance Welham killed your sister’s fiancé, yes. But as I understood it, Sir Arthur killed himself.”
    “Because Welham left him no choice!” Emotion blazed up again, burning her cheeks. “He died of desperation! And what of my poor sister? Sent off to die a penniless orphan, a world away from all the comforts she had known! Her fiancé murdered, her heart broken. And all of it, Mr. Napier— all of it —lies at Welham’s door.”
    Napier set his jaw hard. “I am sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he said. “But neither your money nor your tears can alter what’s to come. Welham has found himself some influential friends—friends close to the Queen. Moreover, his father has persuaded the key witness to recant. And now the Lord Chancellor means to overturn his conviction.”
    “Overturn it, perhaps, and that’s a travesty,” she cried. “But that cannot be the end of your prosecution, for you must try again to—”
    “Yes, Miss Colburne, that will be the end of it,” he grimly interjected, “whether either of us likes it or not.”
    He strode to the door and drew it open. The lady, however, stood pat, her fury returning tenfold. “You, sir, are a dastard and a—a bully ,”