Page 41 of Greed: The Savage
The unholy glitter in the viscount’s eyes revealed his excitement. She knew his sort. He wanted a fight.
His fleshy mouth formed a pout better suited to a lady’s lips. Addien wondered whether brother and sister had practiced those expressions together in a mirror.
“What else will you do while the baroness enjoys a fine time with Thornwick? They are well-matched. Neither of them has any shortage of vigor.” A haze of lust glazed the twisted nob’s eyes. “They’ll make an afternoon of it.” The timbre in his voice dipped. “He’ll do her like a dog.” His breathing grew increasingly ragged and she knew a depraved vision of his sister and Thornwick together invaded his thoughts. Crazed lust danced in his eyes.
With the viscount beside himself, Addien used the opportunity to scour the grounds below and plot her way out.
“And while they enjoy themselves, Miss Killoran,” he panted. “I can knock you about.”
The unceasing jealousy that’d battered her at the thought of Malric and the baroness found its breaking point. At Lord Dunworthy’s proposal, Addien nearly gagged on the bile in her throat.
Somehow, she found the wherewithal to speak in clear warning tones. “My lord, I have no interest in being knocked about by you or any man.”
Anger filled his eyes. “Is denying me really worth losing your work at Dynevor’s?”
“Dynevor keeps the girls in his employ safe.” She wouldnotbelieve what Dunworthy said regarding the earl.
“Oh, come,” Amusement penetrated the viscount’s fury. “You are one of Dynevor’s pity hires—the strays he brings in from the streets.”
That rankled. Addien refused to let him see he’d gotten to her. “I’m good at my work and His Lordship recognizes that.”
“His Lordshipalso sent you here for me to enjoy.”
Addien made herself laugh in Lord Dunworthy’s face.
The dandy’s skin mottled. “Say what you will, Miss Killoran—you are far too plain to be one of Dynevor’s prized girls. But for those of us with a taste for guttersnipes, you’ll do. And given your,” He regarded her with the cool hauteur of a man surveying vermin. “illustriousroots, you know better than most—a ring once sanctioned by Dynevor’s predecessors. Men of rank, taking their pleasure in the shadows, for a price.”
His words iced her veins.
And curse her traitorous heart for wanting Malric—not to vanquish Dunworthy, but to drag her from this gilded hell.
He was elsewhere, at his sport, while she bled with envy and despair.
“Now, Miss Killoran,” Dunworthy said, “as we’ve put that aside, shall w—what are you doing?”
She unhooked the double windows.
The pernicious nob gaped. “Are you mad?”
“No,” she said with a calm that further raised the heat in his eyes. She was desperate. Desperation drove people, especiallywomen, to do mad things. “If I welcomed your advances, Lord Dunworthy,thenI’d be mad.”
The viscount made a grab for Addien.
She hitched her skirts up and hefted herself over the ledge. By her assessment, the drop from the window was a scant six feet, and yet the speed with which Addien dropped and the manner in which her belly fell as she sailed toward the ground seemed to somehow both stretch forever and end in a flash.
She landed in an awkward heap among the baroness’s meticulously-manicured boxwoods. Its dense foliage lessened the impact, but did not stop Addien from finishing the fall onto the graveled garden pathway.
“Oomph.”
By the force with which all the air exploded from her lungs, Addien may as well have taken another one of the viscount’s blows to her belly.
Addien rolled onto her back and instantly regretted the painful price of her sudden movement. All her muscles screamed their protest, and she groaned.
I’ve gone rusty.She used to jump from nearly double this height and landed like an agile cat on her feet every time.
Addien closed her eyes. It was the bloody skirts. Lawds, how she hated these fine dresses Dynevor made her don. He might as well have sent her out weaponless into the streets.
Which, as a matter of fact, he had.
