Page 7 of The Devil in Her Bed

And he was gone.

Footsteps followed too closely on his heels, and Pippa shrank into the depths of the tree, both hands clasped over her mouth.

Several gunshots caused her to jump in the dark, then a victorious shout rang through the forest. The American calling for his comrades.

Several times, Pippa thought about going out there to throw herself over his body, but her pain and terrorparalyzed her to the ground, so she simply curled up in the root of the tree and silently sobbed.

Eventually a rustle of branches revealed a dark and beloved face.

Serana.

With a soul-ragged sound, Pippa surged into her arms, burying her face against the wiry Romani woman as her anguish overcame her.

“I know.” Serana smoothed a hand over her hair. “We must flee. Now.”

“But Declan!” she wailed.

“Darling, they ran him down. They… shot him in the back.” Serana’s brown eyes shone soft in the muted light the flames reflected onto the overcast sky.

Devastated, Pippa allowed herself to be carried by the woman to a nearby horse. Her lungs ached and her leg throbbed, but the pain was nothing compared with the pain in her soul.

She sat limply where the strong woman had settled her on the horse before joining her there, riding with a leg over each flank, like a man.

They stood on the restless beast and briefly watched the flames breach the night through the cracks in the boughs as her childhood was reduced to ashes. Everyone she knew and loved was in that house. She thought of them all burning, of the various beasts her mother had roasted and what happened to the meat when the flames would lick at it. Of the sizzle of the juices and the curling of the skin.

She wanted to be sick.

“Why?” she whispered once again through a fog of pain and rage. “Why did I live and no one else?”

Serana’s hold tightened. “Perhaps you did not.” A soft wind picked through the trees as gently as a tentative doe before picking up speed. The air smelled of decisions and destiny.

“Perhaps… Pippa Hargrave perished with her parents in the flames, and only Francesca survived. The heir to the Cavendish title and fortune. The one who can escape this tragedy with enough fortune to do something about it.”

Pippa strained to turn and look at Serana, wondering if she’d heard the woman correctly. “I am nothing like Francesca. She was… delicate.”

“Delicateis another word for ‘fragile.’Youare not weak. I knew from the moment I brought you into this world that, like the dragon, you would have fire nourishing your heart. I simply didn’t see that the fire would be ignited here, with such tragedy.” A strange light flashed from Serana’s eyes as she looked down at Pippa, flames licking at the depths of her pupils. “You lived because the dark deeds of this night needed a witness. Because your destiny is to bring justice to your fallen loved ones.”

“But… I’m just a girl.”

Serana’s sigh contained all the yawning sadness of several lifetimes lived in only a handful of decades. “You are no longer just a girl, I think. And if you decide, I will find those who will teach you to become a woman who can reap justice.”

“I don’t know whatjusticemeans,” Pippa whispered through her tears.

“What aboutrevenge, do you understand the meaning of that?”

Pippa thought about the word.Revenge.It thundered through her with a new meaning, igniting in her breast a spark that was fanned into an inferno by loss and grief and pain.

Vengeance. It meant every person responsible for tonight would burn.

She’d save the worst of her wrath for whomever had taken Declan Chandler from her.

CHAPTERTWO

London, 1892; Twenty Years Later

Lady Francesca Cavendish glared at the naked man draped across the bed with disgust.

She would never live downthistryst. The ton would be in an uproar.Why would a woman as young, rich, and titled as she, bother with a creature as old and odious as Lord Colfax?they would ask.Can she really be so craven?