Vanity

Vanity by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Vanity by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online
Authors: Jane Feather
you care for some Stilton with Bessie’s apple pie?”
    The change of subject was a relief, breaking the intensity of the last ten minutes. It had been a strange sensation to speak aloud the seething fury and to express the hatred she felt for the men who had ruined her own life as ruthlessly and indifferently as they’d ruined her father. But she felt oddly comforted by this near stranger’s attention, by the knowledge that he understood and the certainty that he didn’t judge.
    “What of you?” she said suddenly. “What brought you to the road, Lord Nick?”
    He cut into the latticed pastry of the apple pie without replying for a minute. Then he said offhandedly, “A piece of the past … a misunderstanding, if you will.”
    “A misunderstanding?” Octavia looked at him in astonishment. “How could a misunderstanding turn you into a highwayman?”
    “In much the same way that your father’s lack of understanding turned you into a pickpocket.” He slid a slice of pie onto a plate and passed it over to her.
    Octavia hesitated, unsatisfied with this reply but sensing that it was all she was going to get. The confidences seemed to be flowing only one way. She shrugged and dug a spoon into the round of Stilton, placing a creamy blue-streakedmound on her plate beside the pie. There was no point neglecting a good dinner just because her confidences weren’t reciprocated.
    “Will your father be worried about you?” Her companion took a forkful of his own pie.
    “What do you think?” she demanded. “When people are abducted, they usually leave worried people behind.”
    “How worried will he be?” the highwayman asked steadily.
    Octavia sighed. There seemed little point in exaggerating the situation; the highwayman wasn’t going to suffer any guilty pangs, anyway. “He’s not always aware of the time,” she explained. “His grasp of the past … well, of classical times … is very acute, but he doesn’t really live in the present. Mistress Forster will look after him, and she’ll no doubt assume I’ve taken shelter from the storm somewhere.”
    He nodded. “I will return you home in the morning, if the storm’s blown itself out.”
    “You are too kind,” she said, not expecting the irony to make much of a dent, but she had been forcibly reminded that her virtue this night was totally dependent on the good faith and moral principles of a notorious highwayman.
    As she’d expected, her companion was unmoved by her tone; indeed, he barely noticed it in his own exultant absorption. His long, slender fingers traced the diamond cuts in his wineglass, the firelight catching his amethyst signet ring, the red and blue colors refracted by the glass. Octavia Morgan could be the perfect accomplice for his long-awaited vengeance, and she had laid out for him the perfect motive to persuade her to join with him. He guessed that the promise of her own revenge would be more potent than an end to her financial difficulties, but the latter would be added incentive.
    However, he was convinced she wasn’t ready for the proposal yet. She was an adventuress of a kind, but he sensed that her commitment to the dark realms beyond the law was not yet wholehearted. For all her hardships, shehadn’t touched the desperation that pushed a man inexorably over the edge….
    Octavia suddenly felt cold, as if a draft had touched her back. The highwayman was looking at her across the table, but he wasn’t seeing her. His eyes were as blank and flat as polished slate, and there was no expression on his face. She wanted to speak, to say or do something to break the dreadful masklike intensity as he sat gazing upon some grim internal landscape, but words wouldn’t come to her lips. Then his features came to life again, and his gaze became once more alert, once more recognizing her as his eyes rested shrewd and assessing on her countenance. And the silent assessment was almost as unnerving as the blank stare of before.
    The highwayman

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