Free Dark Fires by Brenda Joyce

filling it with his considerable magnetism. Dread and something else, something nameless, swamped her. Her heart began thundering. Her face went red. Oh, no, why now? She moaned silently.
    “Papa!” Chad shrieked, lunch forgotten. He raced to his father who swung him up and around.
    “How are you feeling?” the Earl of Dragmore asked over his son’s shoulder.
    Jane stared at her hands, twisting them nervously. She prayed he would be as kind as he had been last night—that he would just go away. She lifted her gaze. “Not quite the thing.”
    “You’re an unusual shade of chartreuse,” the earl said.
    Jane’s stomach roiled. She knew she looked ghastly, but did he have to comment on it? Tears threatened again. And she was not a crier. What was wrong with her!
    “Papa, yesterday you said you’d take me riding. Are we going? Are we?”
    “Yes,” the earl said, his tone gentle. He stroked Chad’s head, almost unconsciously. “Finish your lunch, all of it. Even the peas. Then meet me in the library. All right?” He smiled at his son.
    Jane’s chest grew tight. The earl was incredibly handsome when he smiled like that, with such softness and warmth in his eyes. She felt her heart turning over, drumming. Lord—was she in love with him?
    Was she in love with the man England had labeled the Lord of Darkness?
    A man who had been tried for the murder of his wife?
    “Come with me,” the earl said to Jane, stroking Chad one last time. It was a command, his gaze expressionless and impenetrable now. Jane recovered from her monstrous thoughts. She had never been in love, did not know what it was like or how to determine if she was, indeed, afflicted with the phenomenon. She decided that, if she was in love, she would know it. Wouldn’t she?
    “Jane,” the earl said from the doorway.
    Jane did not want to go with him. She was sure he was going to berate her for her behavior the night before, and she had already berated herself enough. But when he used that tone he was not a man to be denied. Bravely, shoulders squared, mouth pursed, prepared to face any executioner, Jane followed the earl downstairs and into the library.
    By the time they were there, Jane was feeling distinctly unwell again. Her head pounded mercilessly. She watched the earl pour coffee from a silver pot on his desk, then add whiskey to it. She started when he handed the foul concoction to her. “For me?” she squeaked.
    The faintest of smiles touched the corners of his mouth. “It will help. Trust me.”
    She looked up at him and saw a soft light in his eyes. Immediately he turned away from her. Jane was sure she had imagined that look, but she hadn’t imagined his words. “Trust me.” The tone had been low, coaxing—enticing. She wanted to trust him, oh, she did. Her heart leapt at the thought.
    She sipped the coffee and found, to her surprise, it was not bad. And when she had finished, she actually felt better.
    “Trust me,” he had said.
    Jane realized that, despite it all, she did.
    It was only her fourth day at Dragmore. Jane, feeling almost up to par after the earl’s brew, was walking outdoors on the edge of the mansion’s extensive lawns. She was already quite far from the manor. Stone-walled, rolling fields were on the other side of the grounds, marking its farthest boundaries. Sheep and their lambs dotted the hillside. It was a clear, cool day, the sky unusually blue and spotted with puffy cotton clouds. The air was fresh and invigorating. If Jane hadn’t overindulged the night before and made such a fool of herself and if that redheaded floozy had not appeared, she would be in very high spirits, indeed.
    But Amelia had appeared, and Jane had gotten drunk and made a fool of herself. If she fell in love with the earl, who was thirty-three, she had learned, and who did not even know she existed, she would suffer even more humiliation. She resolved not to join the earl and his mistress for supper, not tonight, not ever. Just like