Page 91 of The Devil in Her Bed
Across the way, Kenway appeared as if he’d stepped out of the very stone. He was followed by seven stags.
Chandler had imprisoned one, Marcus Fettlesham, before he’d taken the lad’s place as a stag at the previous night’s spectacle.
Who, he wondered, had replaced him?
Chandler knew what many did not… Luther Kenway had alwayspreferredstags over does, which was why his interest in Francesca was so confounding. She wasn’t possessed of a voluptuous physique. Indeed, her slim body’s attributes were stunning in their strength and symmetry, but neither was she mannish.
No, she was all woman.
None of it made any sense.
A smile toyed with the corner of his mouth. With neither he nor Francesca in attendance, a wrench had been thrown into the evening. He imagined Kenway was scrambling to explain the absence of his main attraction. Maye he’d lose a bit of face with his followers, before he lost everything.
God, he couldn’t wait to watch the man choke on his own guile.
The crowd parted for him as he strode in his lion mask to what they’d formed as the top of the dais. Women broke from the crowd, padding to trunks beneath thefood table to extract cushions, blankets, and pillows to strew about the hall.
Chandler looked down at his own watch. Ten minutes. Plenty of time for Kenway to say something treasonous in the earshot of the other agents.
The earl raised his hands as though he were Moses parting the sea, and the humming ceased. “Tonight, we pay homage to desire,” he said. “The second precept of freedom. Tonight, nothing is forbidden you, as it shall be when the walls of our oppressors will crumble, and we will govern the empire by right of might. Power will not be born into, but seized. And to the powerful, nothing will be denied.”
Chandler curled his fist, pumping it with a little motion of victory. There it was, enough to damn him in the eyes of the law.
Kenway held out his arm to another split in the wall. “Come forth, vixen, and I shall do you the honor of serving as your proxy, as well as any of these eager stags.”
No vixen mask emerged from the darkness.
But a dragon did.
The swell of victory shriveled as Chandler swallowed his heart.
The woman in sheer red robes floated down the path Kenway had previously taken. Though her dragon mask was made after the same fashion as the others, it didn’t at all belong. Teeth bared and eyes wide, it threatened the seductive tone of the entire gathering with its ferocity.
Still the devotees worshiped her, as if this deviation was a lark.
She passed him at one point, and he ducked lower into the trench, beneath where the candlelight didn’t reach.
His growing fury didn’t need visual affirmation of just who glided up the path. He didn’t need to see the tattoo on her back, nor the nearly nude form he’d become so intimately acquainted with the previous night.
He recognized the grace of her stride, the set of her shoulders, the strength of her purpose.
Francesca.
It took everything he had not to snarl her name as insolent rage welled within him.
How dare she defy him? How dare she profane herself with the filth of this place? Had she no sense of self-preservation? Did she delight in putting herself in this kind of danger?
Alone. And without weapons.
For fuck’s sake, he could see everything from the sharpness of her shoulder blades to the cleft in her ass.
And so could his men.
Five minutes. Five minutes and the might of the Scotland Yard would descend on this place.
Chandler’s mind raced with alternatives as she approached the dais, an uneasiness hitching the confidence out of her stride.
“Where is my chosen stag?” she demanded in a strong voice.
