Read The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) for Free Online Page A

supported one another, of course; they’d willingly have died for one another. He’d die for her now, God knew, by the cruelest tortures, if it would bring her back, give her even five minutes more of conscious life. But comfort? No. They acknowledged only strength.
    Why had he never realized that before?
    Ah, well, now he had yet another subject to keep his brain brewing in the middle of the night.
    Miss Covington turned back to him with a tentative smile, though her posture had tightened, became more correct again. “Forgive me,” she said, brushing her hands self-consciously over the silk of her skirts. “I’m just a little . . . disoriented right now. All this is confusing.”
    “Yes,” he heard himself murmur.
    She tilted her head a bit, looked at him perceptively. “For you too, of course.”
    “Of course,” he repeated perfunctorily, though he didn’t care to pursue the thought.
    He swallowed hard. Damn it all, why did Jenny not return? How long could it take a lady’s maid to have a good sob, then get back to care for her new mistress?
    A mistress who, by the by, was in dire need of having her hair dressed, of having it cut a foot or two shorter preferably, as was the fashion, instead of hanging loose halfway to her knees. Instead of spilling everywhere in wanton tangles, reflecting firelight with a flare like a siren’s call, so any male in the vicinity might feel compelled to reach out to catch some silken strands between his fingers and . . .
    He thought seriously about slapping himself.
    He needed a return to normality. So he cast his gaze over Miss Covington again, assuming the air of a jaded connoisseur, which, in the usual run of his life, he was.
    “That gown looks well on you,” he told her, with a judgmental quirk of his lips. “A shame to abandon your old dress, though. So practical, that dark wool. Ready for a prayer meeting, or a funeral, at a moment’s notice. And with cloth that thick you’d survive a snowstorm overnight, given a decent pair of boots.”
    Her eyes flashed at him, and for a moment he expected he’d get the sharp edge of her tongue. But then she seemed to decide not to take up the challenge of his insult. “I prefer this color to gray, actually,” she declared. “And I prefer the silk.”
    “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised. “Interesting. Unexpected.”
    The color was coming up in her cheeks again. “Why should it be unexpected? What fool prefers the scratch of wool to the slide of silk?”
    The slide of silk. He really wished she hadn’t used that phrase. Quite without his conscious permission, his eyes skimmed down the gleaming fabric to where it cupped her breasts. Quite lovely breasts. The wool had concealed, somehow, both her slenderness and her curves.
    Where in hell was Jenny ?
    “I’m not the fool who’s been wearing woolens,” he managed to say.
    Miss Covington made a tsking sound with her tongue. “A governess cannot wear silks, even if she could afford them. The lady of the house would have her flogged.”
    He hadn’t expected to laugh any time within this conversation, but he laughed now. “Flogged? Is it really as bad as that for governesses?”
    “Yes!”
    “You were flogged ?”
    She hesitated, slightly flustered. “No, not literally flogged. But worse, somehow. Worse than you can imagine.”
    His brow furrowed. “What in heaven’s name did they do to you?”
    She was frowning; he had the impression she’d just lost patience with him. “Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing . . . physical . It’s difficult to explain. But actual flogging might have been preferable.”
    “You’d have preferred flogging?”
    “At least then, you’d be free to scream. Scream all you’d like. At least it would be something to feel. Something actually alive.”
    His mind was floundering, skidding on ice. This girl really did look so very much like Sal, disconcertingly like Sal. Her voice was Sal’s, the same depth, the