Read Online That Silent Night by TASHA ALEXANDER - Free Book Online Page A

published ( Ghost Stories of an Antiquary was his first collection). Mrs. J. H. Riddell, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, and Amelia B. Edwards (yes, the Egyptologist who gave her first name to Amelia Peabody) all contributed to the craze. Henry James’ magnificent The Turn of the Screw is one of the best:
    The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be  …
    Emily, I am confident, would not be able to resist telling her own tale on a snowy Christmas Eve, regardless of Colin’s feelings on the subject. She would, however, wait until the boys were just a bit older before sharing it with them. Heaven knows what it might inspire Henry to do.

 
    Read on for a preview of the newest Lady Emily mystery,
    The Adventuress.
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Copyright © 2015 by Tasha Alexander

1
    â€œThe English duke is dead.”
    The words, muffled and heavily accented, hardly reached me through the voluminous duvet that, while I slept, had somehow twisted around me with such violence that it now more closely resembled mummy wrappings than a blanket. Struggling against its bonds, I managed to extricate one hand before realizing my head was under a stack of pillows. I flung them aside and sat up, turning to discover my husband was no longer next to me. The words came again, and this time vanquished in an instant all of the confusion clouding my mind after being awoken from a deep slumber.
    â€œMonsieur, the duke, the English duke, he is dead.”
    â€œJeremy?” I leapt from the bed, dragging the duvet with me (I had not been quite so successful in the removal of it from my person as I had hoped), and started for the narrow patch of light coming into our room from the door, held open by my husband, his dressing gown pulled around him. A chasm seemed to open inside me, as if my heart were splitting and filling me simultaneously with intolerable cold and heat. Jeremy Sheffield, Duke of Bainbridge, my dearest childhood friend, who had tormented me in my youth not quite so much as I had tormented him, could not be dead. I tried to step forward, but my limbs would obey no commands.
    â€œIs he in his suite?” my husband asked. The man standing in the corridor nodded. “I shall come at once.”
    He must have closed the door, but I have no memory of him having done so. I collapsed in an undignified heap, my legs no longer able to support me.
    â€œEmily.” Colin knelt at my side, scooped me into his arms and deposited me back onto the bed. “I must see what has happened and will return as quickly as possible. Will you be all right?”
    â€œYes, of course.” I rubbed my face. “No. No. I must come with you.”
    â€œI don’t think you ought.” His dark eyes locked onto mine, and I could see pain and worry and just a bit of frustration in them.
    â€œI have to see him. I—”
    â€œNo.” He squeezed my hand and slipped the dressing gown from his shoulders, finding and putting on the stiff boiled shirt he had discarded earlier in the evening with entirely no regard for its subsequent condition. After retrieving his trousers from the back of a chair and locating his shoes—one had disappeared under the bed—he shrugged into his tailcoat and walked to the door, pausing to turn back and look at me as he opened it. Had I not been so upset, I would have better appreciated the handsome dishevelment of his cobbled-together evening kit. “I am so terribly sorry, Emily.”
    The tears did not come before the door clicked shut behind him, but then my eyes produced a worthy monsoon. Sudden storms are short, however, and this was no time for succumbing to emotion. I splashed water on my face and pulled on my dressing gown. There could be no question of