Charming the Devil by Lois Greiman Read Free Book Online Page B

system like static electricity. Not quite painful, but almost.
    Her breath hitched up tight, and in the pit of her being, she felt a strange, shooting star of something. But it was only her cowardice, she was sure of it. Unwrapping the package, she lifted the contents for him to see.
    He peered at the gift, unspeaking for a moment. “A rock,” he said finally.
    Their gazes met with a velvet clash. “Bloodstone,” she corrected, and lifted the russet amulet by its leather thong. Her heart felt strange. “’Tis said to be a warrior’s friend.”
    “Then mayhap you’d best wear it.” He was staring at her again, making her chest feel too tight for her heart.
    She shifted her gaze away, then forced herself to meet his eyes again. “Ancient healers believed it to be advantageous.”
    Behind her, a horse trotted down the street, the two-beat gait sharp and staccato in the fresh-stirring day. McBain glanced up, looking over her head. Like his chest, his throat was broad, she noticed. Broad and dark and corded with unquestioned strength.
    “You should not converse with the likes of Rennet,” he said, his words slow and cadenced as he brought his attention back to her.
    Startled by this change of dialogue and frightened by his…well everything, it was all she could do to hold his gaze. But amid the fear there was a spark of something else. Something never before felt and therefore unidentifiable.
    His eyes were as sharp and low-browed as an osprey’s. “Terrible things occur even in the best of houses. You should not risk yourself beyond your husband’s protection.”
    She drew a careful breath and forced herself to speak. “I have no husband.”
    He stared at her a moment, then shifted his gaze back to the street behind her. “I am sorry.”
    Interesting. Not a spark of pain sounded in her head. Not so much as a dull throb to suggest an untruth. Why? Did he find her so unappealing thather widowed status prompted not the least bit of interest? “That I am not wed?” she asked.
    He was silent for a long moment, but finally he lowered his attention to her face again. “That I made you revisit tender memories.”
    “I’ve been alone for quite some time.” She was skirting the issue, avoiding the pain, but his next question forced her hand.
    “How is it that he died?”
    “He drowned.” She refused to wince. “Broke through the ice while returning to our modest but happy home in Imatra.” She’d mimicked that particular lie enough times so that it should no longer spark an ache in her brow, and yet it did.
    He watched her in silence, and there was something about his expression, something about his solemn, silvery eyes that sounded a warning bell in her head, that jumbled her nerves and forced her litany.
    “His name was Albert. He was the youngest of three, born on the third of June in 1782. He had fair hair and blue eyes and was but seven-and-twenty when he…”
    She fell silent, though it was all but impossible to do so. What would she give to be normal?
    “Your father, then,” he said.
    “What?” Her voice was barely audible to her own ears.
    “Mayhap your sire could accompany you if you feel it necessary to commune with men in the dark of—”
    “My father is dead.” The truth. It had escaped. She felt panic bubble up like a fountain inside her. But wait! All was well, for this once the truth meshed with the lies she’d been fed with such cautious regularity.
    “Certainly, you have a guardian.” He looked grimmer still. Enraged almost, and that anger seemed to fuse her tongue to the very roof of her mouth.
    But she had made a vow. Thus she raised her chin and struggled for haughty. But truly, normal would be a welcome surprise.
    “Can I assume you do not trust Lord Rennet?” she asked.
    He nodded solemnly.
    “May I ask why?”
    He didn’t blink. Possibly ever. “He is a man.”
    She felt her eyebrows lift of their own accord. Curiosity edged off fear. “You don’t like men?”
    “It