A Rake's Guide to Pleasure by Victoria Dahl

Author:Victoria Dahl [Dahl, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General, Love Stories, Historical, Historical Romance, Gambling - England - London, Women Gamblers - England - London, Rogues and Vagabonds - England - London
ISBN: 9781420100167
Publisher: Zebra
Published: 2008-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Over the course of an hour, Emma found that every full circuit of her ground floor hall took fifteen seconds. The south end of her path brought her face-to-face with the wall clock. Four turns saw one minute tick by. Emma clutched her hands together and continued pacing.Doubt writhed in her chest, and she wished that she could physically beat it down. She did not want to ask for help, but she would do whatever it took. Yes, it was a risk, but if she knew anything in this world, it was the value of risk.

She needed Matthew gone. She needed him powerless to harm her. If she had descended into the depths of blackness she knew ran through her veins, it would have been simple enough. Even a lonely stranger to London could find someone willing to kill a man for a few pounds. But she had not gone to the gutters yet. She wouldn’t see Matthew harmed. The man was a threat to her, and his mind took turns that she couldn’t comprehend, but she wouldn’t see him hurt.

There was one person she could turn to. She did not trust him completely, but she trusted him enough.

She’d reached the wall again, and stopped to stare up at the clock. Five fifty-two. If she said it was an emergency, would his butler follow through? Would he light a lamp and wake him, put the letter into his hands? She could not know. She could only try.

Emma counted off twelve more turns of the hall before she finally lost her patience. She drew the cloak’s hood up over her head and tugged on her thickest gloves and prayed that she could find a hack at this lost hour ’twixt night and day. Prayed that she encountered a servant with a heart or at least sharp eyes that could see her sincerity.

Fog crept up to Emma’s ankles when she opened the door. No one could follow her path, at least; she lost track of her own body when she stepped into the mist.

If there were a hack anywhere near, she could neither see it nor hear it. In fact, nothing seemed to move in the world but Emma and the thick fog. She could only begin walking toward his neighborhood.

The fog parted for her, swallowed her, over and over again as she walked, like a giant, hungry mouth. Sounds jumped back and forth: her own footsteps and other, unidentifiable noises. She should have been afraid, but she simply walked. Her greatest threat had already appeared.

Matthew Bromley had been the closest thing to an appealing, unmarried man in her uncle’s hamlet. And Emma had been a young woman with a body bursting with curiosity. He had chased her and she’d let herself be caught on several occasions. An innocent—or perhaps less than innocent—mistake. His interest in her had only grown focused and intense. He’d no longer been content with walks and kisses. He’d wanted everything, not just her body, but her soul as well.

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