Free Amanda Rose by Karen Robards

voice had bitten her, then whirled about. The girl on the stairs below her jumped, too, and had to clutch the oak bannister to keep her balance.
    “Oh, Susan, you almost scared me to death,” Amanda gasped, her hand pressed to her frantically pounding heart as she stared at her closest friend. Lady Susan Hartwood was a pretty, dark-haired girl cursed with Amanda’s own lack of inches, but compensated with a pleasingly plump body that made her appear several years older than her actual age of nineteen. She had been a resident of the convent for more than two years now, having been banished from the bosom of her family—and the eyes and, the family hoped, the memories of the denizens of the polite world—after she had had the misfortune to be raped by a gang of highwaymen while on her way to a weekend house party scant weeks after her comeout. From what she had told Amanda—and Amanda believed her, for Susan was not the type to tell a self-serving lie—the fact that she was blameless hadn’t seemed to matter to her family. Her father, the Earl of Kidd, had blamed his daughter for the attack that had taken her virginity; he could no longer bear to have her in his house or to hear her name mentioned. Susan had told her that the Earl and Countess of Kidd felt that it would be best for everyone concerned—except, perhaps, Susan—if their disgraced daughter took holy vows and spent the rest of her life behind the convent’s high walls.
    Amanda knew that Susan was profoundly unhappy at that prospect—she had not the least vocation to be a nun—but what else was there for her to do? as Susan frequently asked. Without her family’s support, Susan had no money and nowhere to go. Her eventual fate if she left the protection of the convent would be too hideous to contemplate. Amanda sympathized strongly with Susan’s predicament because it was similar to her own, and the two had become fast friends. Over the years, Amanda had grown to love the other girl like a sister.
    “Well?” Susan interrupted her musings impatiently. Then, looking behind her down the narrow stairs, added under her breath, “We’d better get inside. Quickly.”
    Amanda opened the door and Susan followed her. After closing it behind them, Amanda crossed to the utilitarian washstand that stood against one wall. She had to do something about her appearance before one of the sisters saw her …
    “ Amanda, ” Susan cried, exasperated, and when Amanda turned from sluicing her face with water to eye her blankly, she repeated in a long-suffering tone, “I asked you where you’ve been.”
    “Just … walking in the grounds.” Amanda decided in that split second that she would tell no one—not even Susan, whom she knew could be trusted implicitly—about the fantastic events of the previous two hours. For one thing, she was fully aware that she held Matthew Grayson’s life in her hands; she could not jeopardize his safety by letting her tongue wag too freely. For another, although Amanda was not sure of the penalty for concealing an escaped murderer, she was pretty certain it would be severe, to say nothing of the social disgrace that would inevitably accompany discovery. She didn’t want to bring any more of that down on Susan’s undeserving head. Susan had had enough trouble of that kind already. And there was Matthew Grayson himself; he had killed before and, except for his promise, what guarantee did she have that he wouldn’t do so again? She would be no friend if she exposed Susan to a murderer, and one whose wits tended to wander …
    “Oh, really?” Susan, who knew her pretty well, looked politely disbelieving. Amanda could feel her cheeks coloring—blushing was the curse of the fair-skinned—but she doggedly returned Susan’s look. “Well, if you don’t choose to tell me …”
    “How did you know I was gone?” Amanda asked, hoping to distract her friend, who tended to be scatterbrained at times.
    “Oh, Sister Boniface is looking