The Heiress's Deception (Sinful Brides Book 4) by Christi Caldwell

Author:Christi Caldwell [Caldwell, Christi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542048941
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: 2017-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

Eve devoted her time to a foundling hospital.

She neither knew a child inside these halls nor had a familial connection to anyone else who worked or lived here, and yet she visited and sought to make better the lives of the children who called the sterile place home.

Calum stared blankly down at the columns.

I was one of those children . . . Only there had been no kind-eyed, protective nurses who watched over that institution, but rather merciless men and women who’d beaten children until they’d screamed themselves raw. As Calum had. The day he’d crept out of the miserable dwelling and into the streets of St. Giles, he’d vowed to never again set foot inside another foundling hospital. And he hadn’t.

Until Eve. Until Eve had reminded him there were boys and girls who, by a cruel twist of fate, found themselves alone.

His stomach lurched, and he forced his hand to move as he went through the rote calculations. Except, guilt had crept in along with the past, and there was no escaping it.

When his parents had both fallen ill and died within two months of one another, Calum had found himself alone, without a single relative or familial friend to care for him. He’d fallen into the mercy of the streets, which even in his then-innocent and tender years, he’d quickly learned were ruthless ones that destroyed the weak.

So, he’d stolen to put food in his belly, and he’d killed for the right to draw another breath, and he’d all but bartered his soul to the Devil in order to live. Through it, there had never been a person who’d cared. Lords and ladies had kicked him out of the way and spit on him for coming too close. He’d learned in short order that no one cared about him. Certainly not the people of those exalted stations with their fancy speech. Instead, he’d found a new family . . . people who did care, but people who cared because they lived a shared experience. And in those streets, he, Ryker, Adair, Niall, and Helena had formed a bond greater than any connection he’d shared—even with his own parents. Lords and ladies of the peerage, wealthy merchants, members of the gentry—none of them had acknowledged Calum’s existence.

You cannot die . . . You have the mark of life . . .

That child’s voice of long ago whispered fresh around his memory. The pen slipped from his fingers.

“Calum?”

Blinking, he looked up at the woman hard at work across from him. Concern wreathed her features.

He’d not allowed himself to think of Bedford’s sister, who’d betrayed him and nearly cost him his life. Mayhap it was the frequency with which that missing woman’s name was mentioned now in the scandal sheets. But for the first time, he wondered after her. Whom had she become?

“Fine,” he said succinctly. Unnerved by the intensity in Eve’s brown eyes, he fixed his attention on the ledger. It was surely being in this place that had forced to the surface memories he preferred dead and properly buried.

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