Free Sacrifice (Fashionably Impure Book 3) by Natasha Blackthorne Page A

the growing violence of the
breeze suited her churning emotions. At the first drops of rain, she held her
face up to the sky. But when those drops became more of a torrent, she was
forced to flee inside.
    The air was too hot, too humid.
    Even the fire didn’t help remove the
dampness from the chamber. Waiting for Davey to awaken, she reclined on the
settee and dozed fitfully.
    “My lady.”
    Miranda pulled herself from the world of
her troubled dreams. “What?”
    “A letter came for you.”
    Her heart leapt into a rapid beat and she
sat, rubbing her eyes, trying to clear the remaining sleepiness from her brain.
    The housekeeper placed the letter into
her outstretched hand.
    “More tea, my lady?” the matron asked.
    “Yes, please,” Miranda said, without
really thinking.
    She was staring at the crumbled letter.
It bore several water splatters.
    And a Philadelphia postmark combined with
the flourishing script that bore the name:
     
    Mr. Jan Sexton
     
    She flipped the vellum over. The heavy
wax seal was as impressive and self-important as any English noble’s.
    She brushed her fingers over it. Then she
tore the vellum open and scanned the contents.
     
    Dear Lady Danvers,
     
    I hope this letter finds you well. It is
with the deepest regrets that I must inform you…
     
    Her heart seemed
to stop. Her hands began to shake. She jerked her gaze away for she couldn’t
bear to read any more—

    Chapter Six
     
    With her
heart’s beat increasing to a gut churning speed, Miranda forced herself to read
on:
     
    I
must inform you that Lord Danvers was overcome by fever in Natchitoches. He was
incapacitated by this illness. The necessity to provide him superior medical
care forced my hand. I was forced to remove him to Philadelphia. He is
recovering well now and should be returning to England soon…
     
     
    Relief
washed through her, making her weak all over. She sagged back on the settee.
    Drowsiness
washed over her and she fell into a deep slumber.
     
    “My
lady.”
    Miranda
startled awake. “What?” she said, on a gasp for she had been dreaming deeply.
    She
looked about. The shadows were long. It must be afternoon. “Davey?”
    Mrs.
Williams smiled. “He attended to his studies this morning and now he’s playing
happily in the garden.”
    “Very
good.” Miranda stifled a yawn. She couldn’t believe that she had slept nearly
all day.
    “My
lady, you have a visitor.”
    “A
visitor?”
    “Baron
Drake.”
    Miranda
sat up and attempted to smooth her hair.
     
    Once
Miranda had changed her clothes and received Drake in the withdrawing chamber,
he looked uncomfortable. “Unfortunate news will break soon. Too soon. It will
be a shock. And not even the news but the resulting rancor from peers that
Danvers might have expected to remain sympathetic to him.”
    “What?
What do you know?!” she asked, giving explosive vent to her growing anxiety.
    “Lord
Danvers killed the Duke of Winterton.” Baron Drake spoke the words
matter-of-fact, as though he had not just thrown her whole world off its axis.
    With her
stomach seeming to be collapsing on itself, she backed away from him as she
threw a hand to her mouth. Then she jerked it down. “How? What? When?” The
words tore from her lips.
    She was
shaking all over with the shock, the need to know everything. Impatience
pounded through her blood with every surge of her wildly escalating heart beat.
    Drake
came closer and touched her arm. “Here, my lady, you need to sit.”
    She
flinched away. “Tell me what happened!”
    He
regarded her with those coldly intelligent, dark blue eyes. “The Duke of
Winterton is dead.”
    “What?”
She took several steps back, recoiling what his terse sentence implied.
    A cool
sort of sympathy softened his expression. “Lord Danvers shot Winterton from
behind. The bullet struck the duke in the head, as he lay unconscious from too
much drink, on his stomach in bed in a Natchitoches brothel.”
    The
floor seemed to shift beneath