Read Online The Mask Revealed (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 2) by Julia Brannan - Free Book Online

coachman.”
    “But what..?” started Beth. The warning finger became a large hand, which covered her mouth, smothering whatever she’d been about to say and sending shards of pain from her bruised jaw shooting up the side of her face.
    “If you insist on speaking,” he said, “then I will have to render you unconscious again. I don’t want to do that, but I will if necessary. Do you understand?” The voice was Sir Anthony’s, but the tone was not. It was hard and cold. She froze.
    “I said, do you understand?” he repeated softly. She nodded slightly. “Good. And do you promise to remain silent until we reach our lodging? If you do, I in return will promise not to hurt you, and to answer all your questions once we arrive.”
    She had no choice in the matter, and they both knew it. She nodded again, and the hand withdrew from her mouth. He lifted her gently into a sitting position, but did not relinquish his hold on her. She leaned back against his chest, having no alternative, and they travelled on in silence.
    Was he after all the man who had threatened her in the derelict room, as she had thought at first sight of the scar? It wasn’t possible, surely? The scar was the same, exactly; she would never forget that, it was engraved on her mind as the only means she had of identifying him. She had thought from his careful concealment of his features that night that she must know him, but that this dandified, quintessential courtly Englishman could be the menacing, Gaelic-speaking Scot of the Manchester alleyways was incomprehensible.
    Yet whoever the man who was now holding her might be, he was not any version of the Sir Anthony Peters she had seen before. His reaction to her blow and his behaviour now told her that. She shifted experimentally, hoping he would let her move away from him. She found the close contact with him disturbing; she didn’t know him at all, and wanted to put a distance between them so that she could marshal her thoughts in preparation for what looked like being a very unpleasant confrontation at his house. His arm tightened again warningly; presumably he thought she might try to leap from the carriage if he let her go. She stayed where she was, her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, strong and steady as they travelled through the night.
    Unbelievably, she must have fallen asleep. She struggled back to wakefulness as the carriage stopped. The door opened and the coachman appeared to assist her out. For a moment she wondered whether she should declare that she was being kidnapped and throw herself on his mercy, but when she looked in his face she saw the closed, indifferent expression of the servant who will do what he is paid to do, no more and no less, and knew that the chances of him risking his job to aid what he probably thought was an hysterical female were virtually non-existent.
    She looked at Sir Anthony, who had also stepped down from the carriage and now took her elbow in a firm grip.
    “If you would be so kind as to bring in our luggage,” he said to the man, who turned immediately to do his bidding. Then her husband propelled her firmly away, up the steps of the house, whose door had been opened by a servant, across the hall and into a lamplit sitting room, where he assisted her into a seat and with a firm command to her to stay there, disappeared.
    She sat for a moment where he had placed her, before realising with alarm that if he could trust his people, as he had said, she could expect no aid from them, and no one else would hear if she were to call out for help. She stood, suddenly panicked, and looked around frantically for a means of escape. She made a move toward the window, just as Sir Anthony re-entered the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He had a tray in his hands which he placed on the table.
    “I thought you might like some refreshment. You did not eat much at dinner,” he said conversationally. “Or would you prefer to go straight to