Secrets in Scarlet by Erica Monroe

Author:Erica Monroe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Quillfire Publishing
Published: 2014-09-20T18:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The sun had long ago set by the time Poppy made it to Thaddeus’s townhouse. Night cloaked the debris-strewn streets, blackness twisting in between the alleys as if her soul had projected outward. She walked the now-familiar path to his residence without a lantern, the risk of being seen by the Larkers more terrifying than being set upon in the dark.

They’d been watching her.

That thought came to her with every step, battering her carefully constructed walls. None of this was supposed to happen. She’d researched for a week to make sure that the time-line of her faux marriage and her husband’s subsequent death lined up perfectly with battles the Navy had fought in the Portuguese war for independence.

On the surface, it should have been enough–and no one should have wanted to look closer, no one but Thaddeus and his damnably inquisitive mind. All this time she had spent trying to keep him from finding out her secret, when she should have been worried about the Larkers knowing.

Everything she had worked for was crumbling down around her, and she couldn’t stop it.

Poppy turned onto Thaddeus’s street, the reports from Boz’s office clenched tight in her fist. All except for that one page of her employee file, folded and tucked securely into her apron.

Leverage.

She ran up to his townhouse. Again and again her fist pounded his door, but there was no answer. “Thaddeus, please!” She grew more desperate with every hit to the door. “Please, please, please answer the door.”

Where could he be at this hour? Unbidden, the image of him at a tavern with another woman rose in her mind. The knot in her gut pulled tighter, until she could barely breathe. She leaned her forehead against the cool wood, giving one last smack to the door.

You belong with us, the nuns had said when they visited Uncle Liam’s farm. You’ve been a sinful harlot but God will forgive you, if you let us help you.

She’d failed.

The door opened. She fell forward, almost colliding with a sturdy chest clad in a white linen shirt. Thaddeus steadied her, his hands on her shoulders to keep her from sliding downward.

“Poppy.”

She fought the urge to collapse in his arms, for his baritone voice expressed in that one word everything she was feeling. Worry, surprise, shock...and that stupidly eager part of her that had insisted on fleeing to him, certain he could fix all her problems, even if she couldn’t tell him what was truly going on.

He ushered her inside, shutting the door behind them. “I didn’t expect you.”

She thrust the papers at him.

He glanced down at them, nibbling at his bottom lip as he puzzled out the meaning. “So I was right about the financials,” he muttered, more to himself than her.

“They did it.” The words spilled out of her lips. “Boz Larker killed Anna.”

Thaddeus’s hand lingered too long on her shoulder as he showed her into the library, warming her frigid flesh.

“You’re certain?” His voice held a note of eagerness he couldn’t hide.

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