“The chain is broken. God, it looks like it was torn off. Like someone—”
She didn’t finish what she was thinking. She didn’t need to.
Maybe someone was watching them in those woods. She had already seen too much, knew too much. She had come here with her throat bared, secure in the trust that it wouldn’t be slit, and he had been quick to make a play for her before she was even in her season.
He rarely found himself at a loss but this was a fucking quagmire of a situation. The townsfolk had already poisoned her thoughts against them, kindling the faint embers of suspicion to a roaring flame. And then there was Ben’s carelessness in managing his wife—if he had disposed of Noelle beneath the black hellebore in some fucking fit of ancestral-inspired pageantry, Cal was going to kill him.
Without being fully conscious of doing so, he steered Nadine to the library. Shock had made her passive and she was leaning heavily on his arm, feet dragging on the runners. It felt like she was a trophy that he was bringing home from the woods.
He pushed her into one of the armchairs less gently than what he suspected she was used to, and knelt down in front of her. His height served him well when it came to intimidation but it made leveling with people rather difficult.
“Nadine.” He spoke deliberately, taking the hand that wasn’t still clutching the necklace in his own. Her fingers were ice-cold, in spite of the summer heat. “Putting yourself through all of this isn’t going to save your sister.”
“Then help me.”
“You don’t want my help,” he said bitterly. “Not at my price.”
Her face shaded from desperation to disappointment, which shouldn’t have stung but it did. She had hadexpectationsof him and he had failed to rise to meet them, and fallen thusly in her regard. “Take me back to my room, please.”
Cal swore inwardly. At this rate, she would never let him close enough to do what needed to be done. “I can give the necklace to Rael, if you’re worried,” he offered, as he turned her towards her door. “He’ll see that his father gets it.”
“No,” she said sharply.
“Are you sure? It could be evidence.”
Her body jerked visibly at those damning words. She had obviously been thinking the same thing and was shocked to hear it from his own treacherous lips.
“No,” she said again, a tremulous note entering her voice.
“It’s up to you.”
Her fingers tightened around the chain, fisting it against her breast. She did not look like a woman who was about to go marching to the police, but right now, she didn’t look like a woman who had stood partially denuded before him with his cock in her hand, either.
His lower belly throbbed and he clenched his fingers until the pain of his nails biting into flesh overrode the lingering echoes of discomfort in his loins. “I suppose I’ll see you at dinner.”
Nadine didn’t demur; she slipped into her room without another word.
But this time, he heard the clatter of the bolt as she drove the lock home.
C H A P T E R
E I G H T
she will not be yours
Someone’s watching us, Nadine had said, sounding like a soft-eyed animal with no natural predators finding itself trapped for the very first time. She was correct, obviously. There were eyes everywhere, restlessly scanning for game—and she had stepped right into the crosshairs.
Cal had been expecting the angry knock on his door, but it had come quite later than he anticipated. He had just enough time to slip a bookmark into the book he’d been reading and hoist himself out of his careless supine slouch as his brother slammed into the room like a destructive gust of wind, rattling the wall hangings and causing the curtains to stir.
At 6’3”, Ben was a few inches shorter than him, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in arrogance and breadth. Hefting around construction materials all day and walking large plots of land had given him a toned physique that was further refined by his hunting. His drinking had added padding but not softness. Like any good lord, he considered himself above working the land, but he knew better than to let himself become outpaced by those he considered a part of his serfdom.
“How very considerate of you to ask for permission,” Cal said, because seeing his brother bluster amongst his belongings like it was his right annoyed him, and he knew a direct challenge to Ben’s vanities rarely failed to land a hit.
But luck was not in his favor tonight. Ben decided to ignore him, picking up the glass dome with the stuffed sparrow that saidMy Sweet Evangelineat its base. “I never could figure outif it was an endearment or a warning.” His thick fingers bit into the glass, his voice bearing that same ragged edge that it had that night in the library. Though this time it was anger, not misery, fragmenting his speech. “Perhaps he only wanted to keep her . . . close.”
It took effort not to glance at the closed tapestry door. “Knowing our grandfather, he likely wanted to keep her on her knees, poised at the ready for service. Just like one of his hounds.”
“Not a hound, Brother.” Ben set down the dome with a clattering sound. “The true ladies never partake in the hunt.”Not as huntershovered unspoken in the air, like a taunt.
