Free Lord of Fire by Gaelen Foley Page B

moment, swept up in a totally unexpected, unsought, unwanted attraction of dizzying power.
    “Shall I come to you tonight?” he asked very quietly.
    She gasped and tore her gaze away, her heart pounding. “No!”
    Heaven above, the sooner she collected her sister-in-law and left this wicked place, the better. First thing in the morning, she would race home to
Glenwood
Park
and forget everything she had seen here tonight—including him. Especially him.
    She heard his vexed, long-suffering sigh, then a snick as he turned the lock.
    The minute he opened the door, Caro launched into the room and threw her arms around his neck. “Darling!”
    Alice ’s eyebrows shot upward at the sight of the haughty baroness, tipsy and disheveled, her hair wet from the pool, her brown robe falling over one bare, white shoulder. She clung to Lucien, unaware of
Alice standing at the other end of the room.
    “Did you miss me? Did you need me, my bad boy?” She thrust her hand between his legs, caressing him where
Alice had not dared to. “Were you jealous? You should be,” she chided with a drunken laugh. “I’ve been coming my brains out down there. I’m quite addicted! But I have a plan, you see. I’ve been building up slowly, saving the best for last. That’s you.”
    Alice ’s greeting wilted on her tongue. Shocked, she watched her sister-in-law rubbing against him, riding her leg up the side of his thigh. Caro slipped her hand inside his open shirt and pulled him closer.
    “Take me, Lucien,” she panted, biting his earlobe.
    Alice clapped her hand over her mouth. Good Lord! No wonder Lucien had scoffed when she had said that she had come to rescue Caro from him. What a sickening display! If anything, Lucien needed rescuing before the baroness devoured him .
    He cleared his throat and plucked her roaming hands gingerly off his body. “Er, Lady Glenwood, there’s someone here to see you.” He turned and gestured toward
Alice with the detached interest of a spectator at a polo match, as though merely curious to see what would happen.
    Caro followed his gaze and discovered
Alice standing there. The lusty mirth drained instantly from her face, which took on a waxy pallor. With a stricken look, she lifted her hand automatically to smooth her damp, tangled hair. “
Alice! W-whatever are you doing here?” the baroness stammered weakly.
    Unable to meet her sister-in-law’s gaze,
Alice looked at Lucien in misery, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her. A flicker of some guarded emotion flitted through his deep gray eyes, but he offered not a word to ease the excruciating silence. He did not care about all this, she realized. What was left of her family was being finally destroyed before his very eyes, and he probably found it amusing. How she wished she had stayed home with Harry and held onto her willful ignorance about the full extent of Caro’s debauchery. Clearly, it had been a mistake to come.
    “Harry has the chicken pox,” she replied at last in a leaden voice. “You must come home. We leave at dawn.”
    Caro gazed helplessly at her, her façade ripped away as though, through
Alice’s eyes, she had peered into the most painfully truthful of mirrors. She turned to Lucien, at a loss. He rested his hands on his waist and just looked at her.
    There was a long, hollow, excruciating silence.
    Then, without warning, Caro lashed out at them in explosive rage. “How dare you come here?” she screamed at
Alice, her face twisting with fury. She started toward
Alice like she wanted to claw her eyes out, but Lucien grabbed her arm, holding her back. “Get her out of here, Lucien! How could you let her come in here? I swear to you,
Alice, if you say one word to me, I’ll throw you out of
Glenwood
Park
! You’ll never see Harry again!”
    “Calm yourself,” Lucien ordered curtly.
    “Let go of me!” Caro called him a dozen filthy names as he pulled her roughly back to the door and handed her over to the