Page 131 of You Only Love Twice
Adele's head snapped sharply around.
A trail of darkened blood smeared the red carpets just around the corner. A handprint of bluish red marred the perfect ivory walls, and a door leading into the room beyond swung eerily open.
In the middle of the carpet lay a woman in bloodred skirts, her dark hair tumbled across the floor and a coat covering her face.
"Is she—?"
"Stay here." Adele's ears started ringing, as she swept toward the fallen stranger.
There was no pulse in the woman's throat, and someone had clasped her hands across her breasts in a position of repose. Adele swallowed hard and lifted the coat to see who had—
She let it fall the second she saw what remained. Gorge rising, Adele turned away swiftly.Oh, my goodness. Hattie stared at her in shock, her lovely blonde curls swept into an elegant chignon and her face paling when she saw the horror on Adele's.
"Who is it?" Hattie whispered.
Adele could barely speak. She pressed the back of her hand to her lips. Baroness Schröder. Her husband's mistress.
That poor woman.
AndIhated her.
"What's going on?" Hattie's voice grew small. "They're fighting upstairs, and there's a dead woman in the halls, and..." Her green gaze flickered to the bloody handprint on the wall and the door that lay ajar. "And someone's hurt."
Adele recognized the darker color of the blood. Whoever was bleeding, they weren't human.
And someone had killed the baroness.
A blue blood?
Adele swallowed hard. There was no time to give in to hysteria. "Stay here. I'll see if he's still breathing." There were so few female blue bloods it had to be a man who'd left that much blood on the floors.
"Are you certain that's wise?"
An excellent point. If they were injured, then they might be potentially dangerous. Who knew what the craving might do to a blue blood who was weakened—and hungry? "You hurry past. I'll try and latch the door so he can't come after us."
"I don't want to be out here with her!"
"She's not going to hurt you. She's dead. I'll shut the door so we can safely pass."
Adele prepared the hemlock ring on her finger, flicking one of the fine silver thorns out. Hemlock beaded at the tip like a raindrop.
One that could drop a blue blood where he stood.
Creeping toward the door, she reached for the handle, a nervous flutter turning her insides to mush. If someone leapt out at her she was probably going to scream.
Then hemlock him.
Except there was nothing moving in the room inside.
Adele's breath broke from her lips in relief, and she swiftly yanked the door toward her to close it and—
That was when she saw the man's boots.
Adele froze.
A man lay on the floor inside, a bloody trail leading from the door to his body, as if he'd dragged himself as far as he could before he passed out. Buckskin trousers caressed a firm backside and the white silk of his waistcoat—court attire—was ruined.
She took a cautious step inside, prepared to flee at any moment if he leapt up from the floor, but he didn't move.
