Free A Love So Dark (The Dark Regency Series Book 4) by Chasity Bowlin Page B

marriage, would offer her peace. She’d never imagined that she might find herself in a place just as menacing in an entirely different manner.
    ***
    Griffin was in his chamber, half dressed when the knock sounded. Assuming it to be a servant or, as some traitorous part of his brain suggested, Olympia, he called out for entry. He regretted it instantly. The scent of a familiar perfume reached him long before she did.
    Florence.
    “You shouldn’t be in here,” he said. “It isn’t proper.”
    She gave him a coy smile as she moved about the room, touching things, trailing her fingers suggestively over any object that could be considered remotely phallic. It left him entirely unmoved. He knew her to be a viper, soulless and untrustworthy. Nothing else mattered.
    “You haven’t missed me even a little in my absence?” she asked, her lips forming a soft, pouty moue.
    “No. I have not. I would say I hardly notice your absence but the house was unaccountably peaceful while you were gone. Get out, Florence.”
    She laughed gaily. “Peaceful? Hardly. Not with your poor, mad sister wailing to beat the band!”
    “Florence, I warn you,” he uttered through clenched teeth, “Do not speak of her so!”
    “Whyever not, Griffin? Cassandra is poor, she is mad and she is your sister. I’ve said nothing that is untrue, and quite honestly, I am not without sympathy for her plight. I, better than anyone, know just how much damage your uncle could inflict upon a woman!”
    He closed his eyes in disgust. “Speak your piece, Florence, and get out!”
    “Send her away.”
    “No.”
    She smiled at him, her face a vision of perfection and her heart blacker than anyone he’d ever known. “You didn’t even ask who I meant,” she protested. “I was not speaking of your dear sister but your new bride. Send her away!”
    “Whether you spoke of Cassandra or Olympia, my answer would remain the same. There is only one woman in this house I mean to send away and that is you. As soon as the weather has cleared, you will go to the dower house or back to Liverpool. I’ll leave the choice to you. But you will never again cross the threshold of Darkwood Hall. Is that clear?”
    The small vase she’d been holding and fondling so suggestively came flying at his head. “Bastard!”
    “Bitch,” he replied reasonably.
    “Shall I tell her then?” Florence asked. “Shall I tell your meek, little bride that you once proposed to me? That you professed your love so gallantly and so perfectly that I was swept away by the romance of it all?”
    “You will say nothing to Olympia about our former engagement. In fact, you will not speak to her at all!”
    “Oh, we’ve spoken already. I might have even let slip that I tried to convince you to wed me to satisfy the terms of Honoria’s will. I bet she’d be very put out to learn that you were once completely enamored of me.”
    What woman wouldn’t? She would be living under the same roof as a woman he’d once been engaged to marry. If he was lucky, she would simply stop speaking to him. If he was unlucky, and historically speaking that seemed the more likely outcome, she’d pitch half the contents of the house straight at his head. “What do you want, Florence? What is it that will buy your silence?”
    “Increase my allowance… and hire a footman that I took a fancy to at Lady Jane Darlington’s house. He’s a veritable beast in bed. And you know how much I like that.”
    It took all that he had not to choke the life out of her. “When you move to the dower house, I will hire him as your footman there. But not before. And I’ll look into raising your allowance, but I will not pauper myself or the estate for you fripperies.”
    She snarled, her beautiful face twisting into a gruesome and angry mask. It was a more accurate reflection of her true self than anything he’d ever seen. “Be wary of offending me, Griffin. If you court my ire, I possess all the information needed to ruin