The Spitfire by Caldwell Christi

Author:Caldwell, Christi
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2019-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

It had been two minutes and thirty seconds since anyone had spoken.

And Clara knew only because ever since she’d revealed what had happened, her gaze had been fixed on the round clock at the back center of the Muses theatre for each passing moment.

Seated at the edge of the stage with her legs dangling down, she stared forward . . . unable to look at her friend on her left or the man who’d served as Clara’s former employer to Reggie’s other side.

Their silence was deafening and ominous.

Oh, in the immediacy of what she’d learned, and the vow she’d made to see Henry destroyed, the reality was, in the light of a new day . . . she saw no way out of this.

Connections trumped all.

Nobility trumped even more.

And despite what the Killorans had, and all Clara did not, they were no match for the peerage.

“I might have him killed,” Broderick Killoran at last suggested, with forced brevity in his tones.

Reggie gasped. “Quiet,” she ordered, jamming her elbow into his side. “You’re not one to go about murdering people.” Clara rather suspected at one point he had been, however. It was a detail his wife likely did not or could not want to see about the man who’d been so transformed.

Broderick grunted. “I was trying to ease some of the tension.”

“You failed.”

Actually . . . he hadn’t. Not entirely. If she wasn’t close to crying, and if she’d been capable of it, Clara would have managed a laugh at Broderick Killoran, ruthless gaming hell owner, jesting over offing a lord.

If that lord weren’t Henry.

If she hadn’t already witnessed the gentleman near death.

If he weren’t a lord who genuinely cared about his sisters and mother—an all-too-rare sentiment amongst members of the peerage.

And also if you hadn’t kissed Henry last night with a burning intensity you’ve never known from any other kiss.

Clara had not taken a lover in four years. And the last man she’d taken to her bed had been a business partner of another gaming hell. Not once in all the times he’d bedded her had that man kissed her mouth. And his denying that intimacy had been an indication that he’d believed her inferior. Undeserving of his kiss. Somehow less in his eyes, while he saved that special part of himself for someone he’d deemed deserving.

But Henry . . . he had devoured her with his mouth, kissed her like she was the only woman in the world and—

Stop, you pathetic fool. Here she sat, waxing silently on about the bastard’s embrace while he sought to ruin her.

Nay, when he already had ruined her . . . and Reggie.

Reggie, however, would be fine. Able to begin again, and secure with the wealth and power marriage to Broderick Killoran afforded her.

“This cannot be it,” Reggie said quietly, in an echo of what had reverberated in Clara’s mind throughout a long, sleepless night.

“A nobleman talks, and the world listens. Do you truly believe they . . . he . . .

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