Unleash the Curse by Alexa Egan

Author:Alexa Egan [Egan, Alexa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781476726236
Goodreads: 16130207
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2013-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

5

Sarah rubbed the sleep from her eyes and stretched the kinks from her spine. It was still dark, though the coming dawn brightened the library to a dusky gray. A pile of books sat by her feet. Enough information to choke a horse. Unfortunately not enough to answer any of the thousand questions pinging around her brain like gadflies. She’d found a few mentions of the mythical Gateway. In one volume she even found an artist’s interpretation of it, complete with carved arches of marble and pearl—lovely but not very helpful. So much for midnight inspiration.

She’d better escape back to her bedchamber before the maids arrived to build the fires or Hester’s belowstairs gossip would be about her. She’d stretched the rumor mill to the breaking point with her disappearance last night. She dare not risk anyone growing too suspicious. It would take only one slip-up to bring her fragile aura of respectability crashing to the ground, rendering her decision worthless. By now the light filtering through the windows made candles unnecessary, and it was quick work to slip out of the library, scamper up the stairs, and hurry through the corridors back to her room with only a quick glance toward the locked doorway into the west tower.

Safe within her bedchamber, she discarded her robe and shawl upon a chair. Curled beneath the quilts and closed her eyes. The sheets smelled of lavender, the blankets of cedar, but there was another scent underlying them both. A scent she knew all too well—the musky sweet odor of cinnamon and cloves.

Christophe had been here.

She swallowed back the first spurt of fear. Of course the room smelled of him. He’d visited her last night. But it wasn’t the room that smelled. It was her bed.

She leapt to her feet, stomach flip-flopping. Had he discovered she’d snuck into his rooms and lain in wait hoping to ambush her with accusations? Or had he merely decided he’d waited for an answer to his marriage proposal long enough and it was time to convince her once and for all?

Her gaze fell upon her dressing table. “Damn and blast,” she hissed through chattering teeth.

Christophe’s bracelet lay gleaming in the new morning sun, though darkness seemed to flicker beneath every jeweled facet as if something living lurked within each perfect stone. Faces crumpled in terror . . . arms reaching out for her . . . darkness leaving no trace behind. The sight of the bracelet turned her stomach until she wanted to be sick. Temples throbbing, she doubled over, a hand pressed to her midriff, quick shallow pants staving off her nausea. Then she saw what had been placed within the circle of gold—a ring.

A man’s simple gold band bearing a family coat of arms. She knew who it belonged to without picking it up. She knew what had happened without having to hear it spoken. The bile rose into her throat until she wretched, the pain in her head firing down her neck into her spine.

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