Free Devil's Dominion by Kathryn Le Veque Page B

before. In fact, she’d heard her father mention the name but little else. Her father wasn’t one to discuss his business with his children, although he did discuss it with her older brothers, Coleby and Julian. They were being prepared to take over her father’s empire one day so it was natural that her father spoke to them about such things.
    As she sat in the cooling water, she began to think on her siblings, sisters and brothers she missed very much. There was Coleby, her eldest brother who was big like their father but blond like their mother, and then Julian, who was the spitting image of her father. She was next, as the eldest daughter, and she tended to favor her father more than her mother also. Then came Effington and Addington, or Effie and Addie as they were called, two blond sisters that were born thirteen months apart and resembled twins more than single-birth siblings. She missed them the most. Effie had a loud mouth and loved jokes while Addie was very sweet and sickly a good deal of the time. Then, there was baby Cassian, who wasn’t so much a baby as he was an active toddler. He was as smart as a whip and a joy to the family.
    Aye, she missed her family very much. She hadn’t seen them in over a year and she could only imagine how her father was going to react to a gift of her hair delivered to his doorstep. Even though she had never known her father to go to war since she’d been born, there was always a first time. He was fiercely protective over his family and she knew he wouldn’t take her abduction lightly. But she would not tell de Llion that, not when the man was so eager for Jax to respond to him.
    So she sat in the tub and pondered her fears for the future as the water cooled. Eventually, she was forced to climb out, drying off her prune-like skin with one of the shifts that Grayton had brought her. She didn’t have anything else. The oil he’d brought her was still on the bed and she picked up the phial, smelling the contents. It, too, smelled of lavender and she smoothed it sparingly over her parched skin before donning a second shift of very soft wool. It was very fine and, she was sure, very expensive.
    Much as Grayton had warned her, however, it was too big for her but she didn’t care. She put it on, and gladly, and also put on a dark blue brocaded robe over the top of it. The robe was very heavy, lined with rabbit fur, and sleeveless so the long, belled sleeves of the shift were revealed. Digging around in the pile of garments, she came across a pair of mismatched woolen hose with no ribbons to secure them, so she simply put them on and folded them down so they would stay on her feet.
    Dressed warmly for the first time in weeks, she sat by the fire to dry her dark hair, running her fingers through it because she had no comb. She kept inspecting the ends, ends that de Llion had so brutally cut, lamenting the fact that he had cut her hair by at least two feet. But in the same breath, she thought it rather foolish to lament cut hair when she would be cutting it anyway when she took her ecclesiastical vows. Still, it was her last claim to vanity.
    On the floor next to the hearth, Allaston continued to dry her hair and reflect on thoughts of her family and future. The fever still lingered and she would cough every so often, but overall, she felt much better than she had in a very long while. She was lost in thought, basking in the warmth of the fire, when the chamber door opened. Startled, she turned to see a most unwelcome sight.
     
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    Bretton was still in the great hall, still at the feasting table lingering over a sixth cup of murky red wine when Grayton entered. Around them, the men had finished feasting and were now playing games of chance or telling loud stories over the buzz of conversation. The hall itself had grown smokier from the fire that had been stoked into mammoth proportions as Grayton crossed the floor, kicking the wandering dogs aside and refusing to get