Lord Sinister (Secrets & Scandals Book 3) Read Free

want a woman assistant.  I hate the thought of leaving you.”  Those cursed tears threatened to resurface.  “I must return to England and take the governess position offered to me.”
    Amelia went still after speaking those words.  When she had accepted the offer, her only consideration had been taking care of her son.  Mr. Giles said he would pay her an astounding forty-five guineas per year.  She wouldn’t have to worry about feeding Alex his next meal or being able to buy him a coat when the weather turned cold.  Of course she had accepted immediately.  She’d never have another opportunity like that.
    Only now, she realized she would have to return to England.  She closed her eyes.  There could only be one reason the thought of returning to her birth country would bother her so much.  Julian.  And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t forget a single thing about him.  The softness of his dark hair between her fingers.  The way his eyes lit up just before he smiled.  The feel of his lips sending sparks down her body in every direction as soon as they touched hers. 
    A little shiver raced down her back at the possibility of seeing him again.  She popped open her eyes and shook her head, calling herself a fool.  The likelihood she would ever see or speak to Lord Julian Westland, Marquess of Amersleigh, son of the Duke of Kenbrook, was remote at best.  She wouldn’t be attending any of those fashionable balls and galas, and he certainly wouldn’t be anywhere near a nursery attending the lessons of small children.  No, indeed.
    Chiding herself for giving that man any thought at all, she focused back on Dr. Rutland’s grave.  After pressing a kiss to her fingers, then touching them to the cold granite, she whispered a prayer along with her final good-bye.
    Wiping her tears away, she turned from the grave and started back.  But as she hurried away from the grand brick homes with the pretty gardens and neatly cut box hedges, toward the crowded, filthy buildings and garbage lined streets, her thoughts strayed to her return to England.  And the tiniest chance of seeing Julian again.  Her heart quivered at the very idea.  She frowned and her steps slowed.  The man had ruined her whole life.  If, by some miracle, she did happen to see him again, why, she’d make his pretty ears bleed from a tirade he would not soon forget.
    A shock of cold wetness on her right foot startled Amelia from her thoughts.  She gasped and looked down, then groaned.  She stood in the center of a muddy puddle, the frigid liquid seeping into the hole she had worn through the sole of her only pair of shoes.
    Chiding herself for not paying attention to where she was going, she scrambled out of the murky water, and came face-to-face with a skinny boy not much older than her son, Alex.  She started to greet the child, but her smile fled when he withdrew a rusty old knife from his tattered coat pocket and pointed it an inch from her chest.
    “What are you waiting for, Bart, grab her,” the boy ordered to someone standing behind her.
    Still reeling from the sight of the knife, Amelia didn’t react to those words.  And not until iron-like hands gripped her arms and yanked them back behind her did she understand their meaning.  Pain tore through her shoulders, forcing a cry from her lips.
    “I got her, Vinnie,” Bart said, his voice deeper than the one standing before her.
    Her head spun with pain as she forced the question from her lips.  “What is it you want?”
    The boy before her grinned, exposing two rows of yellow, crooked teeth.  “Empty your pockets, wench, and I might let you live.”  He waved the filthy blade before her nose.
    Black dots danced in her vision.  “I-I can’t move.”
    “Ease up a bit, Bart.  But only a bit, mind.”
    As the agony in her shoulders and arms subsided and feeling returned to her hands, Amelia dragged in deep gulps of air.  Her sight cleared.  One of her arms had