“No, they’re in the Green Salon. Well, those who remotely believe in the possibility of you chatting with God are.”
Evangeline glanced around her crimson chamber. “There’s a Green Salon?”
“Don’t look so hopeful. Not green like dandelion leaves and lime ices and grass in the springtime. Green like decaying moss moldering atop a tombstone. Gray is the only other color. Well, and brown. Made me long for scab-colored furniture again. Lionkiller is in dire need of a bride. And a shopping excursion.”
“Who is in the Green Salon? Your mother?”
“Of course.” Susan selected a poker from next to the fireplace. “She’s not going anywhere until the matter is solved, one way or the other.”
“I don’t understand why she doesn’t want to escape while we’re all still alive. Does she think him innocent?”
“Lioncroft? Lawk, no. But he got away with murder last time, didn’t he? History may repeat itself. In which case, he remains rich and eligible, and with his neck intact.”
“You’d marry a murderer?”
“I was already planning to do so,” Susan pointed out, nudging the fire with the poker. “If he escapes the noose again, nothing of substance will have changed.”
Not true. Plenty had changed.
Evangeline leaned against one of the cavorting-troll bedposts and frowned. For one, “Lioncroft” was no longer a faceless name. She’d met the man himself. Argued with him. Danced with him. Kissed him. Watched him threaten a man…for laying a hand to his sister. He admitted being angry enough to kill. And he didn’t deny having done so in the past.
What was wrong with her for being attracted to him in spite of herself?
His weren’t mere character flaws. Dangerous, violent, unpredictable. He shared many of his worst traits with her stepfather, a man of no redeeming qualities. A vile man she’d never understood why her mother had remained with, even if—as Mama claimed—she’d only done so for Evangeline’s sake.
What if Mama had felt a similar…attraction…to Neal Pemberton? A quickening of the pulse, an undeniable awareness from deep within?
Evangeline shuddered. Revolting idea. But suddenly, horribly, humiliatingly plausible. Relatable. Oh, God. Had her mother’s attraction to her second husband’s exterior blinded her to the evil inside? Evangeline would not make the same mistake. Wouldnot.
“What’s wrong?” Susan asked, one hand on her hip, the other gripping the poker. “You made the most horrid face of revulsion I have ever seen in my life. What were you thinking about?”
“Mr. Lioncroft.”
“And he merited such an expression? I’m the one to marry him, not you.”
That’s right. Evangeline would never marry. She stared into the crackling fire. The carved trolls scaling her bedpost dug into her back. “Don’t you—that is to say,doyou—find him attractive?”
Susan shrugged. “Perhaps, if you’re the sort to find Satan himself attractive.”
“How would you know what Satan looks like?”
“Obviously, like Lioncroft.” Iron clanked against iron as Susan shoved the poker back in its stand. “At least the man’s been tarrying outside your door instead of mine.”
Evangeline pushed away from her bed. He had, but how would Susan know? He’d disappeared long before she’d sailed through the connecting door.
“You saw us?”
“‘Us’? You mean him. Of course. He took root right there in the hallway and said he planned to wait until you woke, just to make sure you were all right. Disturbing. If I should sicken after we marry, I hope he leaves me well alone.”
Evangeline crossed over to the cracked mirror next to the doorway. Disturbing? Only because it was Mr. Lioncroft. In any other man, such an act would’ve been sweet. Charming. Kindhearted.
“You didn’t tell me he was out there waiting.”
“I did so. I said he came by with that horrible treatise on metallurgy.”
After trying and failing to poke her flyaway curls back into their coil, Evangeline glared at her reflection. “You didn’t say hestayedby.”
“I figured he’d get bored and leave. Why, is he still there?”
