The Sweetest Revenge Read Free

voices and limit their speaking to ensure he wouldn’t identify them.
    Anna glanced up and reached across the table to clasp Isabelle’s other hand. Isabelle looked down at the two hands holding her own.
    Susan and Anna had sought Isabelle out when she’d come to London with her great-aunt this spring. At first she was surprised by their kindness, but as she grew to know them better, she’d begun to understand.
    Lord Leothaid had wounded them, too. Leo had made them all suffer.
    “I trust you both.” She struggled to speak through a surge of emotion. “You…you are my only true friends.”
    Susan and Anna squeezed her hands, and she simply sat for a moment, smiling. So this was camaraderie. So this was what true friendship was. Isabelle imagined their bond as a silvery cord of strength flowing between them, each contributing to it, helping it grow. The three of them together were powerful. Their combined strength could overcome any obstacle.
    Almost. She couldn’t ignore the sheer audacity of what they had done, or the resident fear coursing through her, reminding her that something could go horribly wrong.
    A dreadful foreboding skittered up her spine.
    Susan continued. “We must be strong. All three of us. It can be difficult to force understanding onto someone, and men are prone to be stubborn when challenged by the weaker sex.” Her lip curled with disdain. “But we will do whatever it takes. This is our goal, and we will not surrender until we have achieved it.”
    “Never surrender!” Anna agreed, her tone vehement.
    Both Anna and Susan turned to Isabelle, whose mouth suddenly felt dry.
    Remember what he did to you .
    He’d ruined her in the eyes of the world. And at her darkest hour, he’d abandoned her. She might have led a happy life with a family of her own one day. But now she was naught but a worthless spinster, a burden to her family and society. She blinked away the stinging moisture in her eyes.
    She would stand beside her friends, whatever their plans.
    “I will never give up,” she whispered.
    A shadow fell over the table. It was the incongruous Frenchman, blocking the light from the window. Isabelle looked up and felt the same little shock she experienced each time she laid eyes upon the man. For when she imagined a Frenchman named Pierre, she thought of a little bespectacled printer from Paris, not this giant.
    His voice, too, was out of place. It seemed when the man opened his mouth, the words should come out as the coarsest street cant, not the cultured, smooth tones of Paris.
    “The monsieur is awake,” Pierre said.
    A cold sweat broke out on Isabelle’s temples. The periphery of her vision blurred. Swaying, she gripped the edge of the table. To see Leo again after all these years…
    How would she survive it?
    Anna clapped gleefully.
    Susan turned to the younger woman. “Are you ready, Mistress Jane?”
    Grinning at Susan’s use of her alias, Anna nodded.
    “And you are certain he won’t know your voice?”
    “Absolutely certain, dear Lady M,” Anna said gravely.
    Lady M. Mistress Jane . And Isabelle was to be Miss Juliette. What if she forgot herself and blurted one of their real names? What if she ruined it for all of them? She gripped the table so hard, her knuckles turned white.
    Oblivious to Isabelle’s distress, Susan rose, a wide smile spreading over her composed features. “Then we shall begin.”
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Someone touched Leo. A fingernail drifted across his cheekbone, over the gag, down to the edge of his jaw. He sat at the edge of the chaise longue and struggled to remain still, though every fiber of his being commanded him to fight. By now he knew that physical resistance against these villains wouldn’t help. His earlier efforts to escape had only resulted in chafing his skin raw.
    Tight ropes, which only tightened when he struggled against them, bound his wrists behind his back. Metal shackles encircled his ankles and were attached by a heavy chain