Captives of the Night by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

year. Or has it been? Have you been seeing him on the sly? Was he at Norbury House? You might as well tell me. I can find out easily enough. Was he there?" he demanded.
    "Yes, he was there!" she snapped. "And I left. So much for your disgusting suspicions. And if your cesspit mind isn't satisfied with that, ask your friends — ask anybody. He's only just arrived in England."
    "How did he come to be at Norbury House?"
    "How the devil should I know? He was invited. Why shouldn't he be? He's probably related to half the peerage. Most of the French nobility is."
    The twisted smirk hardened. "Fiona invited him, I'll wager. Pandering for you, as usual — "
    "How dare you — "
    "Oh, I know what she's about. She'd love to help you make a cuckold of me, the black-haired she-wolf."
    "A cuckold?" she echoed bitterly. "What does one call what you've made
me
? What name does one give the wife? Or maybe the title 'wife' is sufficient joke in the circumstances."
    "What should you like to be instead? A divorcee?" He laughed. "Even if we could afford it, you wouldn't like that a bit, would you? Why not? The scandal might do wonders for your career."
    "It would destroy my career, and you know it."
    "Don't think I won't make a scandal if you attempt an affair." Kicking aside the canvas, Francis crossed the room to her. "Don't think I won't make you pay in private as well. Can you guess how you'll pay, my precious?"
    He stood inches away. Revulsion churned inside her, but she refused to retreat. If she appeared to doubt her own strength and will, even for a moment, he'd doubt it, too. She lifted her chin and gazed coldly up at him.
    "You're not to see him again," he said. "Or Fiona."
    "You do not tell me who I may and may not see."
    "I'll bloody well tell you what I like — and you'll obey!"
    "And you can roast in hell! You don't dictate to me. I won't take orders from a whoremongering swine!"
    "You viper-tongued little hypocrite! I let you go your way — let you deny me your bed — and this is what I get. You skip off to Surrey to wrap your legs about that — "
    "Shut your filthy mouth!" Hot tears welled in her eyes. "Get out! Go drink yourself senseless, why don't you! Eat more of that poison you love so much! Intoxicate yourself to death! Only let me be!"
    "By gad, if my head weren't pounding like a steam engine, I'd — " He raised his hand. He was just about furious enough to strike her, she knew. Yet she wouldn't shrink from him.
    He only stared at his hand. "But of course I can't throttle you, can I? Because I adore you so." He chucked her under the chin. "Naughty baggage. We'll speak of this later, after you've calmed down. And you won't come in and knock me on the head with a blunt instrument, will you, love? We're not in France any more, recollect. English juries are not at all soft-hearted — or headed — about women. They've hanged plenty — even the pretty ones."
    She made no answer, only stood rigid and silent, staring at the floor as he left the studio. She remained so while his footsteps faded down the hall. When, finally, she heard his bedroom door slam shut, she moved stiffly across the room and sat down on the sofa.
    She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
    She was not afraid, she told herself. Any scandal Francis brought down on her must hurt him, too — as he'd realize when he recovered from last night's debauch. If he recovered. If the drink and opiates weren't destroying his reason.
    In the ten months since they'd come to London, he'd grown steadily worse. Some days he didn't leave his bed until dinnertime. He took laudanum to sleep, and again when he woke, to relieve the pain of rising from his bed. Always, he needed something — drink or opiates to dull the restlessness or peevishness, the headache and other discomforts. Always he needed something to carry him through this demented existence he called living.
    She should not have quarreled with him. His mind was diseased. She might as well try to argue a man