Page 274 of From Rakes to Riches

She leveled him a sour look. “Does that mean you fear me?”

He tilted toward her. Suddenly—distressingly—grave. “You terrify me, Mercy Goode.”

She had to swallow twice before she could deliver her question without sounding as breathless as she felt.

“Did you do it?” She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees as she examined his features thoroughly. “Did you kill Mathilde Archambeau?”

“No.” He looked her in the eye as he said this. Unblinking. Unwavering. “She was dead when I arrived.”

The ache in his voice tugged at her and, she was ashamed to admit, uncoiled something complicated from around her guts. Something dark and unfamiliar.

Surely not jealousy.

Not for a dead woman.

Not because of a man like him.

“Why didn’t you call for the police, then?” she demanded.

He flexed his shackled arms, leveling her a droll look of his own. “I’m one of the most wanted men in the empire.”

Berating her own stupidity, she winced, causing the welt on her cheek where she’d been struck to throb. Testing the wound gingerly, she sighed, grateful her fingers were cold against the sore, swelling flesh.

“What were you doing there in the first place?” she queried impatiently.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, his gaze affixed on the spot where her fingers explored her own cheek. Every twitch of discomfort she made seemed to turn his eyes a darker shade of grey, as if a storm gathered within them.

“I will break every bone below that man’s elbow for the pain he caused you.” Shards of gravel paved a voice that had only just been smooth as silk.

“I abhor violence,” Mercy lied, if only to condemn him.

If only to escape the very visceral vibrations that shimmered through her at the ferocity in his tone.

She drew her fingers from her face and folded them as primly in her lap as her manacles would allow.

He snorted with disbelief. “Is that why you read the macabre mysteries of Detective Eddard Sharpe? They are always deliciously brutal. Which is your favorite?”

She set her jaw stubbornly against a little thrill at the idea of discussing the books with him, but refused to be drawn in. He was a criminal and a condemned man.

A foe. Not a friend.

“I shouldn’t think a man such as yourself took the time to read...or even knew how.” She was acting the spoiled baron’s daughter, but she thought it might make that illumination behind his gaze dull. That blaze of interest. The heat that hadn’t waned during their conversation, but grew in strength and brilliance.

He simply stared at her expectantly until she found herself blurting, “My favorite isThe Legacy of Lord Lennox.”

His eyebrow lifted again. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s the most violent of the series. A man gets sawed into pieces and his bits are delivered to his family members. One of whom is the murderer.”

“That’s different,” she huffed, refusing to be impressed. Refusing to picture the man in front of her lazing about somechaise longue, his limbs slack and his shirt undone as his eyes traced rows of delectable words.

Did he nibble at his cheek as he read? Or perhaps thread those elegant fingers through his hair...

She snorted at her own absurdity. “Fiction. Entertainment safely contained in the jacket of a book.”

“In my experience, reality is ever so much more fantastic than fiction. And nothing is so dangerous as the written word. It is how power is usurped and ideas are spread. Literature is the most dangerous weapon a man can use. After all, it has been written that the pen is mightier than?—”

“Are you afraid of the noose?” she interrupted him abruptly, for if he finished quoting Edward Bulwer-Lytton, she might do something ridiculous.

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