Brimstone Seduction by Barbara J. Hancock Read Free Book Online Page A

equilibrium might never right itself in this place. She couldn’t find her footing, mentally or physically. Every thought, every move needed to be carefully calculated. Which meant the evening was going to be a test. Severne threw her balance off even without the aid of strange surroundings.
    Finally she was unpacked and changed for dinner.
    She’d brought no tulle and satin this time, but she did wear pearls with a pink shell of shimmering crushed silk and a long ivory pencil skirt with matching heels. The boy might be afraid to see her. He might instinctively fear the woman responsible for his mother’s death. Dressing for dinner might be inadequate preparation to face him, but it was the least she could do in this aged atmosphere.
    She unclipped her hair and let it fall in heavy curls around her shoulders, hiding the pallor of her cheeks behind chestnut waves.
    It was stalling and she knew it, but curiosity was a good excuse to pause in the quiet hallway and step closer to examine the wainscoting. In the dimly lit corridor of l’Opéra Severne, the elaborate carved murals were a jumble of faces and forms. From the grotesque to the sublime, on the walls beautiful angelic figures embraced mystical beasts and monsters, all entwined. The artist had been both mad and brilliant. So lifelike were the figures, Kat blinked against the feeling that they peered into her face as she tilted it closer to examine them.
    Around her, all was silent. The whole opera house was expectant and still. The building along with everything and everyone in it waited for noise to rise up and fill its grand salon with music.
    But something pricked at her senses...
    Kat held her breath as she pricked up her ears to pick up a distant murmur. There were likely hundreds of rooms and chambers in l’Opéra Severne. Closets and offices, attics and catwalks, scaffolding beneath the stage for trap doors to allow entrances, exits and costume changes. This must account for the murmur. Not gas or air conditioning, but people. Many people going about some manner of business, but respecting others who slept at odd hours to accommodate schedules kept during the opera season.
    The great swirl of carvings was still and silent. In spite of the trick of her eyes that brought it to life as she stepped closer, it was as immobile as it should be. Hundreds of faces were frozen in wood even as they cried for a hundred years. Cried or screamed. She could also discern lovers embracing amid the chaos of passionate battle. Murder, kisses, tears.
    So many tears.
    The mural in front of her was filled with weeping. Why hadn’t she seen that at first? Face after face contorted by poignant emotion. Kat moved even closer, drawn by the pain. Why, she couldn’t say, but she was compelled to see, to...hear?
    The distant murmur was no longer a hollow echo from the dark reaches of the opera house. There was a whispering quality to it now. A sibilance. Gooseflesh rose on her bare arms. The close, still, dusty air of the theater had gone suddenly chill. The hallway darkened and then lightened in turn as if a shadow passed in front of light after light. The dimming and lightening progressed closer and closer to where she stood.
    There must be a thousand eyes in this mural. And suddenly they all shifted their focus to her. Staring. Beseeching. Drawing her closer.
    Kat lifted her hand, ignoring the strange behavior of the lights and the tremble in her fingertips. She would touch the mural. Prove it was nothing but inanimate art created long ago. As one shaking finger neared the closest face—a masculine angel perfectly captured in the gleaming shine of carved wood—a very real and immediate noise superseded the whispered murmur.
    A low growl sounded behind her, and Kat dropped her hand to turn and face its source.
    Adrenaline warmed her goose bumps away as a flush of blood flowed to her extremities from the sudden leap of her rapidly beating heart.
    The