Read Online Demon of Mine by Ranae Rose - Free Book Online Page B

with
Elsie’s knees. They wobbled slightly. Thankfully, her skirts seemed
to hide the fault from Damon’s eyes. “And yet you continue. Do you
intend to tell me why you are so sure of my innocence? I would very
much like to know why a maidservant trusts my character when even
my own sister doubted me.”
    Elsie sucked in a quick breath, and
for a moment, time seemed to stop. Damon held her gaze, favoring
her with a hint of a smile while the stars hung overhead,
statically bright, not twinkling. Even her own heart skipped a
beat. The truth danced on her tongue, dangerously close to escape.
At the idea of divulging her secret she felt almost as brave as
Damon seemed to think she was, and then horribly ill. What would he
think of her – oh God, what would he think? But he wanted an
answer, and the courts would demand the same from him. He spoke as
if there was no one else to say he’d been home when the clock had
struck three. She could tell the truth. Maybe she could even help
his case. “I saw you.” She said it before she could stop herself,
and then there was nothing to do but elaborate. “I saw you that
night, after you arrived home. I know you couldn’t have killed Lord
Griffith if his body was still warm at three, for you were in your
bed then.”
    Not a single cricket had the mercy to
interrupt the silence that stretched between them then.
    “ I was in your room, behind
the dressing screen,” she said softly. “You’re furious with me. I
understand.”
    “ No.” There was an odd note
in his normally silky voice, a hint of discomposure that was at
odds with his reputation and his family name. “I am not angry. I
cannot be – not when I have watched you in secrecy so many
times.”
    Elsie’s mouth went dry. “Watched me?”
Her heart surged, sending blood racing through her veins. There had
to be some mistake.
    “ Whenever I had the
chance,” he said softly. “Whenever I could, I watched you. Not
during any…intimate times.” Elsie’s cheeks flooded with heat as he
continued. Intimate indeed. “But I’ve always noticed you among the
servants here at the London house, and whenever you caught my eye,
I would watch. While you cleaned, when you strode through the
garden or city streets on your day off...”
    She pressed the kerchief to her face,
desperate to conceal what must have been a gaping expression. What
could possibly possess Damon to watch her? She could hardly imagine
a duller sight than a housemaid polishing a candlestick or shopping
for a cheap trinket in the city, ignorant of her observer. “Why?”
she asked simply, fighting the pleasantly dizzying effect of the
soft cloth, heavy with Damon’s scent.
    “ Would that I could tell
you the entire story,” he said softly.
    “ Can you tell me at least a
little bit?” she asked, emboldened by the shock of his perplexing
confession.
    “ Of course. You remember,
surely, the day my mother hired you?”
    “ How could I forget?” A
familiar sensation of bone-deep regret washed over her as she
remembered the odor of her parents’ death in the air, the scrape of
the cobblestones against her work-calloused palms.
    “ The sight of you stirred
my heart that morning,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten
you.”
    Elsie suppressed an incredulous noise.
“Stirred your heart – me, the young wretch sopping on the side of
the street?” She vividly remembered the water running grey from her
ash-stained hair and face, as well as the singed and threadbare
fabric of her pauper’s gown.
    “ Yes.” His voice was
velvet-smooth again.
    “ You have an unusually kind
heart. Were it not for you, your mother never would have taken me
on. God knows what sort of misery I’d have been consigned to
without your family’s Christian kindness.”
    One corner of his mouth turned up in a
wry smile.
    “ Is that it then?” she
asked. “My pathetic state made such an impression on you that
you’ve never forgotten?”
    “ That’s not it at all. I
know my