My Fair Marchioness (Scandalous Affairs Book 3) by Christi Caldwell (best short books to read txt) 📗

His big frame stiffened and then went limp. He lay there… motionless.

A rocklike pressure cutting off her air flow, Julia stared dumbly at Rand Graham’s felled henchman, taken down by his own impatience and size.

Julia’s skin went clammy. Her chest rose and fell as she struggled to get a breath in through the fear.

This was a doubly unforgivable grievance. One didn’t take down Rand Graham’s henchmen. They were a protected class, that security afforded them by the dirty work they did for that bastard. Backing away from the felled stranger, she edged toward the door.

This bastard might have failed, but there would be others behind him. There might even be another one out there right now.

Julia proved a faithless friend, choosing life when death had chosen Adairia.

She scrambled to the opposite side of the one-room abode she’d shared these years with her sister. All the while, she kept her gaze averted from the little puddle of blood that had formed around the brute’s head. His face, buried down in the stone floor as it was, concealed the extent of the gruesome, fatal injury he’d suffered.

Dropping to her knees beside the bed Adairia had once slept in, she fished out the small treasure trove the other woman had kept through the years. Julia clutched the case to her chest, and with the cherished items cradled close, she bolted.

Julia ran, stretching her legs and strides as long and fast as they could go.

The moment she turned the corner of Aldridge Street, she forced a moderation to her cadence. Drawing attention to oneself in these parts was dangerous. Doing so after causing the death of Rand Graham’s minions would be a fatal folly.

Her lungs burning from the earlier pace she’d set, Julia kept her gaze forward, heading straight for a hackney.

The man gave her a dismissive once-over. “You got coin?”

Aye, he’d read the financial state of his potential passenger quite well. Fishing coin from the purse she’d been given days? A lifetime ago, Julia shoved them at the driver, and gave the Duchess of Arlington’s address. “Now, if you please, Mayfair.” As she spoke, she scoured the streets behind him for any hint that Graham’s men had found her out and were looking for her.

Apparently, the world wasn’t all out of miracles where she was concerned. There was a placid calm, a mundanity to the everyday bustle of Covent Garden.

Climbing inside the hack, Julia rapped once on the roof.

A moment later, the driver shut the door, the carriage dipped, rocked forward, and she headed onward to perhaps an even greater danger—meeting with one of London’s most powerful peeresses.

Chapter 4

Harris had imagined there wasn’t anything worse than agreeing to accompany his godmother and her two friends to Almack’s…and right on the heels of her ball, at that.

He’d been wrong.

At least Almack’s wasn’t capable of killing him. At least with anything beyond boredom.

“Can they not drive faster?” his godmother called, knocking hard and loud on the roof of her enormous, and in that moment also cramped carriage.

There came the crack of reins, and a moment later, the conveyance hitched forward before resuming a breakneck speed, at a curve no less.

Cursing, Harris braced his feet upon the floor to keep himself from flying sideways into the carriage wall. Packed on the bench as they were, the three matrons barely moved a smidge from the erratic driving.

“You are determined to throw sand upon her arrival,” his godmother said with the same grace and aplomb as if they rolled in a curricle at a sedate pace along Rotten Row and not as though, with every turn of the wheels, they ran the risk that the Marquess of Ruthven line would pass to the next sorry gent.

The carriage rocked precariously to the right, throwing Harris against the opposite side of the conveyance. He grunted, pain exploding along his arm where his elbow caught the side.

The twin countesses, on the other hand, yawned.

Shooting a hand up, he banged hard on the ceiling. “I’m determined to infuse some logic and calm into it,” he gritted out, and the carriage came to a slower, safer pace.

The duchess was already countering Harris’ unspoken command to the servant atop that box. “Do not go dictating the speed of my carriage, Harris.”

Once again, the spacious carriage picked up speed.

He cursed, and again planted his feet on the floor to keep himself from being pitched about. “I daresay risking death to see the lady runs very much counter to a happy reunion.” Harris grunted as Lady Cavendish managed to wiggle her cane free and knock him hard in the shin. “What—?”

“I do not like your tone, dear boy.”

Her own crisp, angry tone was hardly befitting the term of endearment the duchess had affixed to him since he’d been just a child.

“I agree. I’m also displeased with your sarcastic use of the term ‘lady.’ As though we aren’t quick-witted enough to pick up on your insults.” Lady Cavendish took a shot at his left shin this time.

Wincing, Harris leaned over and rubbed the latest injury he’d sustained. “Of course I didn’t mean to cast aspersions upon your intelligence.” At this rate, he was going to be sporting black and blues down his limbs. And that was if he survived the damned erratic carriage ride his godmother had set them on.

Bending over proved the wrong thing to do.

The carriage jolted, sending him pitching forward.

The three ladies reached as one and shoved him back into his seat.

“What I’m merely pointing out—”

“This time,” the friends said in unison.

“—is that you are going to get all of us killed. And while you might be quite content with the years you’ve lived, I am far less eager to die in