House of Dark Delights by Louisa Burton Read Free Book Online Page A

tell from his eyebrows that he was blond. Like many of the other gentlemen, he had a ceremonial sword hanging in a sheath at his side.
    â€œBashful, are you,
mein kleiner freund
?” he asked. “Methinks thou hast wandered into the wrong place.”
    â€œChatting to yourself, Lord Turek?” inquired a lady who sauntered toward them, fluttering her fan. “’Tis the sign of a degenerated mind. I knew there was something about you I fancied.”
    It was the woman in the silver mask who’d been caning the duke out by the fountain. Although English, judging from her voice, she wore, like all ladies of fashion, a luxuriant
robe à la française,
its overskirt of quilted silver brocade extending a good three feet to either side. The weapon she’d wielded earlier, a slim rattan crook, like that of a British schoolmaster, hung from a silken ribbon around her waist. Her face was artfully painted, right down to the little black silk patch near a corner of her mouth; her flaxen hair was styled in a complicated arrangement studded with diamonds, and more diamonds adorned the velvet ribbon around her throat.
    â€œOh, a cat!” she exclaimed. “I loathe the wretched things. Go! Shoo!”
    She lifted her skirts and made kicking motions at Darius, who turned to dart away, only to find Turek directly in his path. “I’ve got him.” He crouched down, arms outstretched and grinning in a predatory way that provoked a searing hiss from Darius.
    â€œThere you are!” A pair of female hands snatched him off the floor before Turek could grab him. Darius shot his claws, ready to spring, as she clutched him to her bosom, whispering, “Easy, Darius. ’Tis I, Elle.”
    He looked up at her, calming when he recognized the blue-eyed honey-blonde who’d captured, or rather, rescued him: Elic in his female persona, dressed for the evening in a lavish gown of pale blue painted silk. Other follets posed no risk to Darius, only humans, whose slightest touch assaulted him with a barrage of desires that he was helpless to ignore—all manner of desires, from a hankering for iced creams to the most bizarre sexual fetish. Darius relaxed into Elle’s embrace, reassured by her familiar scent, barely discernible beneath a saccharine haze of rose oil.
    â€œThe beast is yours?” asked the masked lady, eyeing Darius warily over her fan. “You would do well to remove it before it bites someone.”
    â€œHe really is quite harmless,” said Elle, cradling Darius protectively, “but he cannot abide the touch of strangers.”
    â€œThat is the only kind she
can
abide,” said Turek, indicating the lady who’d just joined them. His grin revealed a mouthful of teeth a bit too white and even to be real, a suspicion that was confirmed when Darius noticed a narrow ribbon of gold around his gumline. Bowing to Elle with a luxuriant sweep of the hand that held the handkerchief, he said, “Anton Turek, at your service, mademoiselle. And this lovely but rather imperious peasant is Charlotte Somerhurst.”
    Darius’s nose twitched, not at the perfume wafting from Turek’s handkerchief, but from an almost indiscernible whiff of something raw and dark that excited the hunter in him.
    â€œReally, Turek,” said Charlotte. “You must learn to introduce people by their titles, as we British do, else one never really knows to whom one is being presented. I am the Countess of Somerhurst,” she told Elle, “and this barbarous Hun is, in fact, a baron from one of those murky little countries no one ever visits.”
    â€œBohemia,” Turek said. “But I make my home in Vienna, for the most part.”
    â€œAnd in London, and Paris, and Venice, and who knows where else,” Charlotte said. “Upon my word, Lord Turek has so many homes, I should think he has forgotten where most of them are.”
    Elle introduced herself with a