Anne Stuart Read Free Page A

about your eyes as well. I could be mistaken, though. Are you?”
    “ No.”
    “ Pity,” he murmured, letting his green eyes slide down her disheveled body. “You could make a fortune.”
    She already had a fortune, inherited from her father’s manufactories. Not that it would do her a speck of good. “He was trying to rape me.”
    Again that long, assessing, intimate look. “I can sympathize with the temptation,” he said, half to himself. “Still, he’s paid for his crime. Do you know the fellow?”
    “ He was my uncle. And guardian.”
    “ How delicious,” the man said with a faint, heartless laugh. “Do you have an aunt as well?”
    “ A cousin. His daughter. She doesn’t like me very much.”
    “ I don’t expect her affection is about to increase.”
    “ It’s not likely to matter. They’ll hang me.”
    He tilted his head to one side, watching her. The mane of black curls was disconcerting—the few men allowed in the house in Crouch End wore their hair tied back in queues, or powdered and bewigged. The loose curtain of hair was somehow disturbing, intimate.
    The haphazard elegance of his clothes was equally unsettling. Emma was used to men who dressed conservatively and properly. Men of sober habits and dour demeanor, who kept their vices behind closed doors.
    This man was slightly drunk. He was surveying the scene of a murder with a combination of faint curiosity and amusement, and her sense of unreality grew.
    “ That would be a great shame,” he said. “Such a pretty little neck.” He sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to do something about it.”
    Emma could hear the thunder of footsteps approaching, the babble of voices. The maid’s high-pitched squeal rose above the rest, her voice carrying through the closed door. “She was standing there covered with blood, as cool as you please!” the woman shrieked. “I saw her. She killed the poor old gentleman, stabbed him through the heart, I swear...”
    Emma barely saw the man move. He strode past her, graceful, swift, and pushed open the door. A crowd of people gathered there, wide-eyed, bloodthirsty.
    “ I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he announced in a cool, arrogant voice. He still held the smallsword in one hand, and he swung it with a negligent air. Blood still clung to it, and Emma had to control her stomach with sheer force of effort. “I’m afraid I killed him.”
    “ Lord Killoran!” the innkeeper exclaimed, horrified. “Were it a duel?”
    “ I’d hardly stab the man in cold blood, now, would I, Bavers?” he said. “The man was deranged. He attacked this young lady, and when I came to her rescue, he tried to kill me. I had no choice.”
    Bavers stared at him, clearly astonished. “You rescued her?”
    “ From the brutish hands of her father,” he said.
    “ Uncle,” Emma corrected him unhelpfully.
    “ Ah, yes. We didn’t have time for proper introductions.”
    “ Lord Killoran, you can’t just walk into one of my rooms and spit a guest,” Bavers said in a reproachful voice.
    “ He didn’t seem inclined to meet me outside. The floor will come clean, if you don’t leave his moldering corpse for too long.”
    A necessary, Emma thought longingly. A few short moments of privacy to cast up her accounts, and she’d face her fate with all the grace she could muster.
    Except that fate seemed to have been spared her, due to the lazy ministrations of this glittering stranger.
    “ There’ll need to be an inquest,” Bavers warned.
    The man referred to as Lord Killoran leaned forward, and the heavy coin that passed between his pale, elegant fingers and the landlord’s rougher ones took care of matters quite nicely. “I’m sure I can count on you to see to things.” He glanced up, toward the doorway. “I think we’d best be on our way, Nathaniel. This inn is far from peaceful.”
    And without another glance at either her or the corpse of her uncle, he walked out of the room.
    The other witnesses followed, no longer