Read Online D2D_Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger - Free Book Online Page A

moment, but there was nothing to see; it was quite dark.
    She glanced at the window seat, where she had made up the fourth earlier. Captain Ruthven was back charming the young ladies. Miss Pagril glowed under his kind regard. Preshea thought he was wasting his time with that one, although it would be a good match (he had exactly enough money for her lack not to be seen as grasping). For some reason, Preshea found that painful to consider. What had been congenial when she was a participant seemed depressing when she was across the room. This is what comes of attempting friendship.
    Using the excuse of a long day’s travel, she retired just as Miss Leeton sat at the piano. It might have been thought rude, but she didn’t care.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    Ghostly Consequences
    Gavin wasn’t one to drink every night, in the way of some refined gentlemen, but he did occasionally take a drop of claret in the wee hours to settle his ghosts.
    There were some ghosts, like the one at dinner – real, interactive, haunting her old home. And there were some ghosts that haunted a man instead of a place. Ghosts that were made of formless stuff, spirits of a brutal past, undead lurking in corners of men’s minds. Especially after war.
    Gavin didn’t regret his soldiering days. He knew for a fact that he didn’t have it as bad as most. Some ex-soldiers drowned themselves in gin. It was cheaper and better at dulling memories than claret. Gavin couldn’t abide gin and he didn’t require saucing to sleep. His ghosts were only occasional visitors. In the wee hours, they woke him, sweating, with no memory of which battle he’d revisited or whose faces he’d seen damned.
    Gavin’s ghosts were impressions left on the backs of his eyelids, of werewolves shifting not for joy of the hunt but for war. The sounds troubled him, not the loud bangs but the softer crunching bone that always went with a vanguard of fur, the nighttime attack of the great packs of the Empire. The smell was there too, copper and sulfur, blood and blast. His ghosts were borne aloft on the glory of men’s suffering. His eyes popped open to the buzz of fear and anticipation, as if he too might shed skin for the madness of a moon.
    Wakefulness was immediately followed by an amorphous feeling of profound loss.
    He excused himself that, under such circumstances, a glass of claret was medicinal. Mawkins certainly made no judgments. For a change. Perhaps he too indulged for the sake of his ghosts.
    Sometimes, Gavin drained the snifter quickly, seeking numbness, and rolled into the less sweat-soaked side of the bed – to dream of lesser ghosts, or better, nothing at all.
    Sometimes, he took his claret to the window and stared into the night, enjoying the peace of smaller hours.
    And sometimes, he awoke to a restless hunger.
    “Dainty sandwiches,” he said, into the silent room. Two bites at most. Cucumber or egg and mayonnaise, the bread spread thick with butter.
    He would not ring for Mawkins. It was gone two in the morning. He would make shift for himself. Surely, the pantry held something for a man to nibble.
    He got himself out of bed. It was a cold night, yet Gavin wasn’t one for nightshirts. Mawkins professed to be shocked, but had learned to tolerate this eccentricity. In case of fire or sandwich peregrinations (Mawkins was well aware of his master’s habit of midnight food pilfering) the valet set out a banyan.
    It was a quality robe, all dark blues and greens, dignified and big enough to cover Gavin entirely, crossing over at the front. Of course, a banyan was considered outdated in these days of smoking jackets and indoor trousers. It had been his father’s, but it was such a nice plaid. Gavin thought he looked rather well in it. Plus, it reminded him of his da.
    Candle holder in hand, he padded softly downstairs into the bowels of the house, where delicious things resided. He found an apple, a wedge of brown bread, and a bit of Stilton left over from the cheese