Love's Price (Lord Trent Series) by Cheryl Holt Read Free Book Online

missed my dessert.”
    More rapidly than she might have imagined possible given his size, he trapped her against a cupboard, his body squashing hers into the oak cabinetry.
    His beefy arms encircled her like a vice as he fought to kiss her. His lips were sloppy and wet, and she was so disgusted that she worried she might swoon, but if she fainted, there was no telling what he might do.
    She knew what happened between men and women. The other maids had educated her in the facts of life, and she had no illusions. Bentley would hurt and humiliate her, might even impregnate her, and then what would become of her?
    Through every hazard and storm of the prior four years, she’d protected her virginity like the fussiest debutante. She’d presumed that someday, somehow, she’d return to the world into which she’d been born, that she would marry a man who loved her, that she would be a chaste bride.
    Though she was cynical and jaded, she still had dreams, still pretended they could come true, and she wasn’t about to let Bentley have what wasn’t his.
    She bit him as hard as she could, and he squealed like a pig and lurched back, lashing out with his fist and catching her alongside the head. She staggered into the baker’s table, pots and pans crashing as she fell to the floor, dazed, on her hands and knees and trying to crawl away.
    Not this! she seethed. You will not do this to me!
    He seized her ankle, wrestling to pull her to him, and blindly, she groped about for a weapon. Her fingers found a heavy frying pan, and she clutched tight and swung it at him with all her might.
    The first blow merely grazed his shoulder, but it was enough to knock him away so she had more leverage. She swung it again, whacking wildly, causing him to yelp with pain and release her. Struggling to her feet, she smacked down again, not certain where the clout landed, but hearing bone crunch.
    He collapsed in a heap, silent, bleeding, unmoving.
    She tarried in the quiet kitchen, trembling, her heart pounding, her stomach roiling. Her dress was ripped, her torso bruised and battered, but she was very much alive while it was frighteningly apparent that Bentley might not be.
    “Oh my God...” she wailed. “Oh my God...oh my God...”
    She dawdled, terrified, her mind reeling over how to proceed.
    “Have I killed him?” she inquired of no one in particular.
    Was there no justice in the world? Was there no luck to be had? What had she ever done but work hard, try hard, do what she ought? Why couldn’t anything be easy? Why couldn’t anything go right?
    She’d simply wanted to retrieve her hairbrush. Was it too much to ask that she be able to do it without being molested?
    She was fatigued and angry and afraid, and she glanced down the hall, knowing she should awaken the butler, that she should confess her crime and take her punishment, but considering Bentley’s behavior, it seemed grossly unfair.
    “I’ll be damned if I will,” she said aloud, her temper flaring.
    She placed the frying pan on the counter, then tiptoed to Bentley, who was still as death. Squatting down, she fumbled through his pockets, delighted to find a purse of coins. Without hesitating, without a ripple of remorse, she clasped hold of it, turned, and ran out into the cold, dark night.

    “Are you sure about this, Phillip? Are they the correct two girls?”
    “Yes, Fanny.”
    “You have no doubt?”
    “None. When she was pregnant, their mother wrote Charles several letters, begging him to come back.”
    “But he didn’t.”
    “You’ve met our father. Of course he didn’t.”
    Fanny Carrington Wainwright, Viscountess Henley, peered at her half-brother, Phillip Sinclair, and sighed.
    She’d only known him a few months, having stumbled on him by accident on her rocky road to matrimony with her husband Michael. From the very first, her connection with Phillip had been potent and undeniable.
    They were now so close that they might have grown up together in the same