Hart's Passion (Pirates & Petticoats Book 2) Read Free Page B

lift.  
    But it didn’t.
    A brief swell of panic pushed against his chest. Once Commodore Grey was dead, things should have changed. The rock in his stomach should have disappeared, the sharp pain clenching his heart every time he inhaled should have subsided and the black emptiness filling his soul should have receded.  
    Yet the morning light was still dull, his feet were still heavy, the air still empty, and his hands still stained with blood. No matter how many times he washed them, the blood returned.  
    He had committed a heinous sin.
    Commodore George Grey undoubtedly deserved to die, but Everett was used to saving lives not taking them. If Rachel hadn’t screamed for vengeance in his dreams every night when he closed his eyes, he wouldn’t have even considered it.
    “Rachel,” he whispered in anguish. “Rachel…I miss you.”  
    Everett didn’t bother to brush away the tears or dry his cheeks. Good God, how he missed her smile and adoring gaze. Her quiet words. Why was he still so tormented?
    He stared down at the letter on his desk.  
    And now, the bank was unwilling to extend him any more credit.  
    This presented a problem.  
    In exchange for Dr. Garrison’s personal medical care, the commodore and his older brother, Jared Grey had given him money to set up a practice in Charleston. Instead, Everett had used it to fund his plan for revenge. The slow poison he carefully dosed to the commodore had been expensive to procure in a discrete manner.  
    He tossed a bundle of papers on his desk. It had been worth every cent he paid for justice to be done. That idiot had given the order to sink the ship carrying his parents and brothers.  
    And his fiancée, Rachel.
    It didn’t matter that the commodore had claimed to have mistaken the passenger ship for a devious French privateer. The commodore had deserved to be punished, and Everett had complained loudly and frequently to those in charge of his court martial. But, before justice could be done, the commodore’s friend, an aristocrat, had used his wealth and influence to whisk away the disgraced Navy commander and his daughter, Keelan, to Charleston, South Carolina and even purchased a small plantation for them. A place for them to hide…far away from the gallows in London where the commodore belonged.
    Everett slammed his fist on his desk. “Did he not deserve to suffer the same pain as I?”
    The man he’d hired in England arranged the carriage accidents killing the wives of both the commodore and his older brother last fall, after murdering the commodore’s nephew. According to the assassin, the women were low-hanging fruit, easy to pluck. Everett didn’t have the stomach to do it himself. He was a physician trained to do his best to preserve life, not take it. Besides, such things were best left to a professional. He had no desire to risk botching the job and getting himself hanged in the process of attaining justice.
    But the loss…the agony. He tried everything to relieve it. Brandy and opiates wore off, left him groggy and sick, and didn’t solve the problem, only delayed the execution of a solution. It was, however during one of those binges when he came up with the brilliant idea of hiring a man to exact revenge for him.  
    Less guilt to deal with if they didn’t die by his hand. A deed he could live with, so he’d thought.
    Everett opened his desk drawer, cradled a pale lavender handkerchief, pressed it to his lips and inhaled. Rachel’s perfume grew fainter each time. Soon, like her, it would be gone forever.
    “The commodore needed to feel the same suffering,” he murmured into the scented cloth. “He had to understand that his transgressions had consequences .” He hadn’t expected he could actually go through with it. The first time he had dosed the commodore with a small amount of poison, the man complained of an upset stomach and went to his cabin. Everett had puked over the side of the ship. His hands quaked for an hour