Free Heartless by Jaimey Grant Page B

cared to. He found her unwillingness to quake in the face of his temper oddly intriguing. It was no reason to think he loved the witch, but it was curious. And that made him want to know her better.
    Leandra forced her eyes to turn to her stepmother and said, “I told you upon your arrival this afternoon, Dowager, that you are not to try to dismiss my servants. If you do, you will leave.” She turned glowing eyes up to her husband and winked in the most audacious manner before she took him into her arms and murmured huskily, “And I like this servant too well to see him go.”
    “You are a whore, I knew it!” declared the triumphant voice of the young, infinitely stupid Lady Harwood.
    Leandra tightened her hold on the duke.
    “Let me go, Merri,” he growled.
    “No,” she whispered back. “I’ll not let you kill my brother’s wife.”
    He gave Leandra a hard glare, one of his worst, but just as he suspected, she didn’t back down. She stared right back, determined to prevent the massacre of her unwelcome family.
    “Stark!” he bellowed over his wife’s head. The butler appeared before him with a wooden expression. “Throw them out, now!” he commanded.
    The butler bowed.
    “You cannot toss us out. You are a servant.” The current earl’s wife was none-too-quick, Derringer noted. “And she is no better than she should be, you know. She used to live under my husband’s roof and she was caught in the footman’s bed.”
    Derringer’s sudden stillness gave Leandra a pang of disappointment. He believed the little cat. She had never been discovered in any man’s bed let alone the footman’s. She’d never even been in someone else’s bed. She released him with a sad little sigh and stepped back.
    Derringer crossed the hall in a flash. Leandra blinked, unable to believe her eyes. He was right beside her one second and the next he was gone.
    He glared down at Harwood’s wife until she shrank away from him in fear. It was all he could do to keep his hands off her. They itched to curl around her slender white throat.
    “Aye, you should fear me, my lady. If you say one more thing against Merri, I’ll have you horsewhipped,” he threatened in a tone of voice that made believers of them all.
    “You will do no such thing, young man.”
    Derringer rolled his eyes and looked at the dowager. “Won’t I?” he asked insolently.
    “No, you will not. The duke would not allow his guests to be treated so shabbily.”
    Another dull-witted one. Wonderful. Glancing at his bride, he asked, “How is it, beautiful Merri, that you are so perceptive while the rest of your family seems to play a few cards shy of a full deck?” She shrugged in answer, her eyes wary.
    The duke crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head curiously at the dowager. “And you know Derringer so well, my lady?”
    She appeared nonplussed. “Well, of course I do. He is my son-in-law.”
    “Is he? So Merri is your daughter. How lucky for you if not for her,” he retorted caustically.
    “She did lie!” exclaimed young Lady Harwood, clapping her hands in glee. “Everyone believes she is legitimate.”
    “You mean she is not related to her ladyship?” the duke asked in apparent shock. He glanced at Leandra. “Is this true?”
    “I am afraid it is,” the duchess murmured contritely, her earlier wariness replaced with silent laughter.
    Derringer grinned. “Thank God. Were you related to a harpy like her ladyship here, I’d pity the duke, Merri.”
    “Would you?”
    “Truly. To have to endure such family would be the death of him. I hear he’s a trifle crazy, you know,” he added confidingly to the dowager and her children. Derringer saw the youngest female pale and felt an unusual qualm about frightening her unnecessarily.
    “Nonsense!” stated the dowager in accents of annoyance.
    “Do you know Derringer, then, my lady?” inquired the duke with every appearance of interest.
    “No, actually. But he is a duke. And dukes are