Dark Fires Read Free Page B

matter. While everything was in perfect order, there was a thick coat of dust everywhere, and cobwebs hung in the corners of the ceiling above the heavy brocade drapes. The walls were covered in faded, aging, quite garish gold damask. Cherubs and nymphs and God only knew what else flew above them, painted on the ceiling amid blue sky and puffy clouds. The room was the epitome of bad taste. Matilda was unperturbed, sipping her tea and eating three crumpets in rapid succession. Jane had tasted the tea—foul stuff. She preferred coffee as her mother had. As for the pastries—she would never be able to get one down.
    She stared at the door, hearing the soft footfall, and then it swung open. Her gaze locked with his.
    Her heart stopped, jolted by his presence, then began to beat anew.
    Before she had just gotten a glimpse of blue-black hair and broad shoulders. Now she was ensnared by frosty silver eyes without the least bit of warmth in them. His presence was vast, threatening. So dark. He filled the doorway. He was bronzed the color of teakwood. It made his pale eyes startling, even eerie, in the harsh, high planes of his face. And he was big. Taller than Timothy, and filled out, broad of shoulder, his hips small but strong. Jane saw, shocked, that he wore only a linen shirt casually tucked into his breeches, no vest, no jacket, no tie, and it wasn’t even buttoned all the way. She could see the flat plane of his chest, a sprinkling of black hair. His breeches were pale, tight doeskin, covering large, powerful thighs and stained with dirt and grass. His boots were muddy. He was obviously the one who had tracked the filth into the house.
    He was uncouth. He was a barbarian. He was everything they said. He was so dark, she understood now where he had gotten his name. And he was staring back at her.
    This realization, that he was staring back as rudely as she had been staring, made her blush hotly, and she abruptly dropped her gaze to her lap. But she could still feel his, cold, menacing— yet somehow hot too.
    “I am Jane’s aunt by marriage,” Matilda was saying. “I trust you received our letter?”
    “I did.”
    “I’m so sorry if I’ve given you a jolt, but with my dear husband passing on, I just can’t keep Jane, and you—”
    “I have no time for a ward.”
    His words were hard and curt, and Jane gasped in surprise. Their gazes met again. Color flooded her. His cold eyes slipped from her face to her waist, but so rapidly she thought she must have imagined it. He turned back to Matilda. “I am sorry,” he said. It was a dismissal.
    Matilda stood, growing red, but not intimidated. “I cannot handle her alone. I am an old woman. She is a trying handful, she is impulsive, reckless, always in mischief. I am returning to the parsonage. Without Jane.”
    “How much do you want?”
    Matilda grew redder. “I didn’t come for money! But we cared for her for almost four years, since she was fourteen. If you have the charity to pass something on, I can use it. But I cannot handle Jane,” Matilda cried with obvious conviction. “If you don’t take her I will toss her out onto the streets!”
    Silence greeted this. Both pairs of eyes turned to Jane. Jane was too hurt by Matilda’s words to be enthused with the prospect of escaping both unwanted guardians, for if neither one wanted her, this was her chance. “It’s all right,” she bravely said, attempting a fragile smile. “I will go to London. I have friends there.”
    “Friends! Bah!” Matilda spat. “That theater trash your mother was a part of!”
    The earl wasn’t listening to Matilda. He was staring at Jane. She had the voice of an angel. He liked this situation less and less with every passing moment. He hadn’t expected this—beauty and innocence and those big blue eyes. And—she was a child. To send her to London alone would be to doom her to a life of prostitution. The factories if she was lucky. He cursed aloud. “Damn Patricia.”
    Matilda