Read Online Dawn Thompson by The Brotherhood - Free Book Online Page A

cried. “He . . .”
    “I know,” he returned, letting her go. “Get behind me, and do not move!”
    His hands had scarcely fallen away, leaving her cold in their absence, when a shattering crash brought them both to the threshold of the yellow suite bedchamber door flung wide behind. They reached it in time to see a silvery streak of misplaced energy surge across the room and crash through the window. Glass shards and splintered wood flew in all directions, as the coachman’s green coat hurtled through the broken windowpane. But it was something shriveled to a tiny splotch of black against the snow that soared off, sawing through the air to disappear in the snow-swept night.
    “Who was that man?” Cora breathed. “What have I just seen?”
    Joss’s head snapped toward her, his eyes fastened to the blue-black lump on her brow. “Has that knock on the head muddled your memory?” he said. “That was your coachman.”
    Cora shook her head. “Not
my
coachman, sir,” she said. “Mr. Sikes is a much older man, portly, spindly legged, and nearly bald.”
    Joss gave a start as if she’d struck him. “Then, who . . . ?”
    “How would I know?” she said, bristling. “He is your guest, is he not? My coachman left us out in that blizzard to die. He said he was going for help, but no help ever came, and he never returned. He was saving himself. He never intended to return.”
    “I do not think so,” Joss said absently.
    “How would you know, sir?” she snapped at him. “Were you there?”
    He seemed to snap out of some strange reverie, and took hold of her arm, turning her away from the window. “Come,” he said, “you cannot stay here.”
    Cora wrenched free of his grasp. “Take your hands off my person, sir!” she said. “I mean to know what I just saw.” She shuffled closer to the window, but he pulled her back from the shattered glass and debris, including the broken remains of the porcelain basin that had evidently caused the first crash, strewn over the bedchamber floor.
    “Have a care!” he said. “You’ve a penchant for treading upon sharp objects, so it seems. Do you want more wounds to those pretty feet?”
    Cora pried his fingers from her forearm. “Let me go!” she shrilled. “I’m not going anywhere until you answerme! Who was that man? Where has he gone? No one could survive such a fall from this height, the snow notwithstanding. What bird just flew out of here? I saw no bird before. Well? I am waiting.”
    “I do not know who he is,” Joss said, raking his hair back from the gash on his brow. “He told me he was your coachman. That is why I let him in and extended my hospitality, giving him shelter from the storm. As to where he’s gone, I do not know that either. And that was no bird. It was a bat.”
    Cora stared. “I do not understand,” she said, nonplussed. “How could a man crash through that window and a bat fly off from it? I am not hallucinating, sir. I saw what I saw. Well?”
    Screams from below were still traveling upward, and Joss scooped her up in his arms. “Do you hear that racket down there?” he said, stalking through the door and down the corridor. “I’ve no time to tell you. My butler lies dying below, and I must go to him.”
    Cora was in no mood to be manhandled. She kicked her feet and pummeled his head and chest with her fists. It stirred his scent, which wafted through her nostrils. The breath of fresh North Country air was now laced with citrus and spice, mysterious and evocative, spiked with his own distinct male essence, heightened from exertion.
    “Here! Put me down!” she shrilled. “Where are you taking me?”
    “Where you will be safe while I see to the press below. Now, kindly desist! You will come to no harm at my hand else you cause it yourself.”
    “Hah! Safe, you say, when you do not even know who prowls your halls, sir?”
    He set her down inside a chamber whose walls werepainted in the design of a landscape in muted shades of