The Love List by Deb Marlowe Read Free Book Online

shadows beyond Montague House.  Without a word she slipped in.  Almost before the door had closed, the driver clucked to his horses and they started off.
    Brynne clutched her bag and stared out the window—and oddly enough it was the Duke of Aldmere that centered in her thoughts as they moved quickly through the deserted streets.  The past was too painful, the future too uncertain to contemplate, so she watched the dark slip by and wondered what the duke would think of her escape.  He’d thought her brave last night.  
    The thought caught her up.  Only twenty-four hours ago she’d been setting out to attend the Dalton’s ball, a young woman content, if not thrilled with her engagement.  Now she was on her own—and pulling up before the innocuous brick townhouse.  The half moon and the stars above the door shone in welcome.
    Her heart in her throat and hope beating in her chest in its stead, she put her hand on the door.
    Outside, the heavy bulk of the driver stalled her.  “A moment, miss,” he whispered.
    She heard it then, the sound that had put a brittle edge in his voice; someone, quite nearby in the darkness, sobbed as if the world was ending and her heart was breaking.  Brynne’s gut clenched in sympathy.  Never in her life had she heard such an outpouring of despair—but how long would she have lasted in Lord Marstoke’s clutches before she sounded as broken as this unknown girl?
    Not long, she suspected.  She kept the door cracked and a hand on her portmanteau, holding herself ready and poised for flight, just in case. 
    “Here now, here now,” the driver soothed, his voice gentle as he approached a bundled form crouched low against the house’s wrought-iron fence.  “Where is he, the rotter that done this to ye?”
    A shaky whimper was his only answer.
    “Still here, then?”  The driver’s head came up and his tone grew sharp.
    The bundle moved.  “No.  Gone.”  Thick and fluid, the answer was barely distinguishable.
    “Come along with ye, then.  You’ve come to the right place.”  The driver gingerly reached down to assist the girl to her feet.  “Miss,” he hissed in Brynne’s direction.  “Come ye and take her other side.  She could use the help and I don’t dare leave ye out here alone.”
    Brynne slid out of the carriage and did as she was bid.  The girl shuffled slowly, and together they helped her manage the few steps from the gate to the door.  The driver’s knock was answered at once, as if middle-of-the-night visitors were nothing out of the ordinary in this household.  A burly footman ushered them in, pulled a bench close for the unfortunate girl, and disappeared into the back of the house—and thus was Brynne’s first entrance into Hestia Wright’s infamous home vastly different than she had anticipated.
    Truly, she hadn’t known what to expect, but that first step over the threshold was such a momentous act—tantamount to throwing her old life, her very identity away—that she would not have been surprised by an accompanying crack of lightning or trembling of the earth.  Instead she found herself fading into the background as the footman returned with reinforcements.
    Two women accompanied him into the entrance hall, both in hastily donned night robes and both utterly focused on the bruised and bleeding girl still sobbing quietly on the bench.  Brynne stared as they examined and comforted her, surrounding the poor creature in a cocoon of soothing concern.  One of the women was as young as she, with a softly rounded figure and hard eyes.  But it was the other woman who captured her attention.  Slightly older, perhaps just into her third decade, she stood tall and elegant, and moved with a svelte grace that caught the eye and held it.  Loosely braided, her golden hair framed a dainty, almost elfin beauty.   She hovered over the unfortunate girl, an exquisite, ethereal vision, almost too fine for this world. 
    Her manner, though, in direct