Page 17 of The Villain
Get a hold of yourself.Your imagination will run away with you and ruin everything.
Knowing what lay in that corridor was of no consequence while learning the truth Adam would reveal to her was imperative. She could not leave Dunnottar without answers.
“Daphne,” he barked, drawing her attention back to him. “I asked you a question. Do you understand what I’ve just said?”
She nodded quickly and found her voice. “Yes, of course. I understand.”
With a curt nod, he opened her door for her. “Maeve should bring you the afternoon meal shortly. Tonight, you will dine with me in the room adjoining yours—where we shared breakfast.”
Nodding again, she moved past him as swiftly as she could—the instinct to avoid his reach as strong as ever. He grinned at her, as if very much aware of how he set her on edge.
“Until dinner, little dove,” he purred before leaving the room and pulling the door closed behind him.
Daphne exhaled, the breath she’d been holding coming out in a rush. His threat of dragging out the inevitable breaching of her maidenhead proved more frightening than anything else she might endure while here. Not knowing when he might strike—when he might strip her naked and use her body for his own pleasure—would keep her constantly on edge. Which, she supposed, must be his aim.
“Well, you are alone now,” she muttered to herself. “No need to fear that when he isn’t even in the room.”
Instead, she would turn her thoughts to the things Adam had revealed a moment ago. Wandering aimlessly around the room, she found an old but polished and well-preserved writing desk with a rough wooden chair pushed beneath it. Pulling out the chair, she sank down and opened the drawer. Inside, she found a stack of stationary, along with a quill pen and full inkwell.
Intriguing.
Had these items been placed here for her use? Perhaps Maeve had thought she’d want to write to her family while living at Dunnottar.
For now, she had nothing to say to her father that Adam had not already revealed in the missive he’d sent to London. What else could she tell him, other than ‘I’m doing it for you, Papa, and Bertie, and Uncle William.’ Her father would know without her needing to divulge it in a letter, and writing it would only bring her to tears. He would likely write back pleading with her to come home, crumbling her resolve. It was best if she did not make contact until she was ready to return, thirty thousand pounds richer.
Pulling out a sheet of the stationary, she unstopped the inkwell and wet the tip of the quill. In the haphazard scrawl that had always vexed her governess, she quickly recorded her thoughts on Adam’s revelations.
Uncle William, drinking led to gambling.
Coerced into gambling away his fortune and property by Adam. Why?
A life for a life. Uncle William, a murderer?
Pausing for a moment, she absently toyed with the quill while staring at what she’d written so far. Adam had implied her uncle had caused someone pain—that it had not compared to the pain of the bullet wound he’d inflicted upon himself. Who could he have hurt so badly that Adam felt William no longer deserved to live?
In her experience, the male sex only reacted this strongly to the pain of another when it was inflicted upon a female in their care, or a child from their loins.
Furrowing her brow, she added another note.
A woman or child?
Had Adam ever been married or sired a babe? She could not think of a single bit of gossip she had overheard about Lord Hartmoor’s family life. Being of both English and Scottish heritage, and owning property in London as well as in Scotland, he divided his time between the two places. Though, she could not recall hearing of him visiting London in quite some time. She had certainly never encountered him in town.
Five years ago. Adam’s return to London coincides with Uncle William’s sudden drinking?
She stared at the note after she’d jotted it down, and she fixated upon it. Daphne did not believe in coincidence. He had returned to London just before her family’s troubles had begun. But, had his dastardly plan run its course? Or would her father and brother suffer even more of his wrath?
Rubbing her tired eyes, she decided it all required closer investigation. She would be prepared to give Adam whatever he asked in return for another piece of the puzzle.
She corked the inkwell and ensured her writing had dried upon the stationary before storing everything back inside the drawer. Shortly after, Maeve arrived with a lunch tray. After the events of the long morning and afternoon, Daphne was positively famished. The maid left the tray and retreated, apparently to see to some pressing task—which left her alone with her thoughts.
Thoughts that, despite her best attempts at avoidance, continued straying to Adam—his hands undressing her, touching her body, his lips claiming hers in a way she would be hard-pressed to forget.
Lord Adam Callahan had destroyed her family and purchased her body as he would a brothel whore … yet, these things seemed minor in comparison to the way he’d set her body on fire, causing her to crave his touch when she should have found it repugnant.
That, Daphne realized, made him far more dangerous than she could have ever imagined.
CHAPTER FOUR
