A Passionate Performance by Eileen Putman

Author:Eileen Putman [Putman, Eileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Eileen Putman
Published: 2015-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Looking down the barrel of a gun wielded by a furious female had a way of riveting a man’s attention. Fortunately the pistol held no bullet, and Sarah’s rage was only pretense. Justin was pleased to see that she gripped the weapon easily with both hands and that her aim did not waver.

He had trained her well.

How easily she inhabited the role of a woman scorned. Intrigued, Justin stared at her blazing emerald eyes. What color were Lady Greywood’s eyes? he wondered idly. His father must have known. He had had time enough to study them from the wrong end of the pistol before his jealous mistress sent him to his Maker.

Justin never understood how a man like his father could drive a woman to commit such a desperate act. What prompted a woman to give herself to a debauched scapegrace to begin with? Hope of bringing the scoundrel to heel, if only for a time? The urge to reform him? To tame him with her feminine power? Whatever Lady Greywood’s motive, it was a dangerous game. Even Persephone, who had captured the heart of Hades himself, had to spend her time in hell. Was it worth it? Justin couldn’t see how.

Any woman who thought to tame his father was doomed to fail. Oscar Trent cared only for cards, a willing woman, and a bottle of spirits. Indifference was the kindest emotion he ever expressed, and Justin had always sensed that his father felt something much more akin to hate for him. Clearly, his father had no wish for a son. Never had he seen a father’s proud smile upon his lips; never had he known a father’s affection or delight. Well, almost never.

More than once over the years a hazy childhood memory had intruded, giving him the image of a father whose face bore no lines of dissipation, no scowl of cynicism, no bloodshot eyes narrowed in scorn. Long ago, he had taught Justin to swim, to ride, to shoot. In those early days his father was merely distant, not the jaded and scornful man he would become. What had happened to turn his father against him?

Perhaps he would never know. He supposed the real question was why he felt it necessary to avenge the death of a man who left no real mourners. His mother had shed tears aplenty the night he died, but Justin could not imagine why. The long nights when sounds of the beatings and her muffled cries floated through the house had left him no doubt that she was better off without her husband.

An eye for an eye...See that justice is done. It is your duty.

Yes, it was his duty to avenge his father. But there was more to it than that — something drifting just beyond the vision of his mind’s eye, something lurking offstage waiting for the proper moment to make its entrance. Something dark and forbidden, as elusive as that magic bird of Magnus’s, as compelling as the pull of yin and yang.

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