Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran Read Free Book Online Page B

when?
    He had thrown it at the girl who had said, I am no girl. When had that been? In his memory, her voice seemed strangely clear, cutting through the murky sewage of his rotted brain. He recalled the vividness of her red hair, and her unusual height; but her face, in his memory, was blank, a pale and featureless oval. What he recalled instead was his own reflection in her spectacles. The reflection of a beast.
    Looking at himself, he had wondered how she did not recoil. How she dared to face him so boldly.
    He ran his thumbs now over his scraped knuckles. He had hit a low point, no doubt. Bullying women; that was what he did now, it seemed.
    But she had not yielded her ground even then. She had challenged him again. She must be deranged. Not as deranged as he, though.
    He remembered touching her, meaning to teach her a lesson in obedience. But now all he remembered was the feel of her lip. Soft. For a moment only, sensation had sparked along his skin, and it had not felt like pain.
    But how predictable. His father had molested the servants. Any number of maids. Four years ago, five, Alastair had known he would never be like his father—that leering, raging, lecherous bull. Even a year ago, he had known it.
    Known it. Ha. A fool knew many things, very few of them true.
    But when had the girl come in here? Yesterday? Two days ago? Twenty?
    Time passes without him now. He is trapped in this moment, which never changes. And he dares not leave it, for if he does, everything will change. The world will cease to remember how it once saw him. Instead, it will see his new face: violent, broken, shattered, murderous.
    These shards on the floor, he sees, are his ambitions, his ideals, his foolish presumptions: I will be nothing like my father when I am a man . I will not repeat his mistakes.
    The silence from the garden reverberates.
    *  *  *
    Olivia started her search in the library, but the very promising cabinets turned out to be filled with maps—so many, and some so ancient, that it appeared some duke had nursed an obsession for them.
    She went next to the study, which she had instructed the maids to clean first today. As she turned on the lights, she saw proof of their shoddy job in the dust lining the edge of the carpet.
    She gritted her teeth. This was not her concern. She was not really a housekeeper.
    She turned the dead bolt behind her. Most studies were humbly furnished, the better to receive tradesmen. But this chamber, with its thick Turkish carpet and oak wainscoting, spoke of loftier pastimes: the business and politicking of great men. To think that Marwick had once been known as a master statesman! A Cato for modern times, incorruptible, the champion of the poor. Ha!
    Yet amid this silent grandeur, the vacant desk and its bare blotter disturbed her. They seemed proof of tragedy, something gone horribly wrong.
    She forced herself to shrug away the thought. Yes,something had gone wrong: Marwick had married a wicked woman. What of it? He’d probably given the duchess ample reason to despise him. Perhaps, for instance, he’d thrown things at her.
    She tugged at the top drawer of the desk. Finding it locked, she plucked a hairpin from her chignon. It took a single prod to coax the latch to yield. This talent was courtesy of the typing school, where she’d sat to the left of a future viscountess, and to the right of a former pickpocket, Lilah, who had firmly believed no girl should ever be baffled by a lock. Secretaries were a very interesting bunch.
    The drawer contained several ledgers. She removed her spectacles, which did tend to blur things, and discovered that these were records of income from the duke’s estates. The notes grew illegible in August 1884; by September of that year, they ceased.
    As the significance dawned on her, she recoiled. In August, Marwick’s wife had died. And shortly thereafter, he had discovered how she’d betrayed him.
    She brought the ledger closer. Like the photographs of crime