Out of the Dark by Jennifer Blake

Author:Jennifer Blake
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Steel Magnolia Press
Published: 2011-11-03T22:00:00+00:00

Something was going on.

Anne-Marie could feel it in the air, sense it in her father’s grave stares turned upon her, deduce it from the flurry of letters sent from Pecan Hill in the care of a groom. It disturbed her in part because no one saw fit to explain it to her, but most of all because her stepmother was ecstatic over it.

She had feared at first that there might be a connection to Lucien’s interview with her father following the incident involving Satan and the hunters. That idea had slowly lost sway in the past three days as the Dark Angel failed to call again and all reference to the event faded away. She had not remained in disgrace nearly so long as she had expected, however, which was another bothersome aspect.

She tried to tell herself that Lucien must have put the best possible light on what had happened on the road and in the woods, that his account had somehow mollified her parent and stepparent. His attitude at the time had not indicated that he might do that for her, but he did seem to have the instincts of a gentleman.

It was also possible, of course, that he had put the worst possible construction upon it. In that case, her father and stepmother could be planning some terrible punishment for her. That would at least account for her father’s concern and her stepmother’s happiness.

Her greatest fear was that she might be banished. Several possibilities as to a destination occurred, each worse than the other. There was a cousin who had married a poor farmer and given birth to seven children in nine years, so had need of another pair of hands. Or she might be sent to be a companion to her father’s elderly aunt in New Orleans, an obese and raddled creature who smelled of snuff and camphor and talked interminably of her days as a belle. A last resort might be the convent in the countryside south of Paris she had heard whispers about, one where wayward females who had embarrassed their families were sometimes shut away.

To lose her freedom would be a terrible thing; the fear of it haunted her. Yet her mind wandered away to other thoughts and images with distressing frequency.

She could not stop thinking of Lucien Roquelaire. She had always felt sorry for hapless females who sighed and wept over the men in their lives, yet her spirits were low and everything seemed dull and dreary as she accepted that he was not going to call again. It was true that the two of them had sparred and sniped at each other without letup, yet there had been an undercurrent of something very different between them. He had looked at her in a way no man ever had before; she had felt in him a fearlessness and tolerance beyond anything she had ever known. She might despise him and abhor his past, but she had also been forced to recognize his essential integrity.

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