Katherine Langford is in London ready to make her debut to society when she discovers that the home next door is being rented by the "Murderous Marquess" Hayden Rowling. Always impulsive, Katy decides to sneak over and take a peek at the notorious M...
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Disaster! I am found out!
"Katy! Katy, wake up! It's nearly time for tea!" From the quaver of horror in Karina's voice, one might have deduced that missing afternoon tea was equivalent to missing the last chariot to heaven on the Day of Judgment.
Groaning, Katy dragged a pillow over her head. But Karina was not to be dissuaded. She tugged the pillow away, then pried open one of Katy's sluggish eyelids with her thumb.
"You need to wake up," she shouted as if Katy were suffering from deafness as well as drowsiness. "It's Sir Tristan's last day here and you've nearly slept it all away." Katy glared at her friend through one baleful eye as Karina picked up the glass of water sitting on the table next to the bed and gave it a tentative sniff. "Oh, dear Lord, the marquess hasn't gone and poisoned you, has he?"
Despite Katy's reassurances to the contrary, Karina persisted in believing that Hayden was some sort of homicidal lunatic, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to murder them all in their beds.
Shoving Karina's hand away, Katy sat up. "Do stop fussing over me, Karina. No one slipped any arsenic into my tea. I just didn't get much sleep last night."
As Katy flexed her limbs in a long, lazy stretch, she was keenly reminded of exactly what she'd been doing instead of sleeping. She was sore in muscles she'd never even known she had. But if not for that warm, tingly soreness, she might have wondered if the whole night hadn't been some delicious dream. Perhaps it would be easier to believe if she had woken up in Hayden's bed, in Hayden's arms.
"Tell me, Karina," she asked, hugging her knees to her chest, "have you never thought it odd that the marquess and I don't share a bedchamber?"
Her friend shrugged. "Not really. My parents can barely stand to share a house. So what kept you awake last night? Was it the return of the ghost?" Karina cast a nervous look over her shoulder. "Apparently, I slept right through the fracas, but the servants have been whispering about it all morning. Someone or something was playing the piano in the music room again. At first everyone thought it was Madelaine, but when Sophia looked in on her, there she was, nestled snug in her bed. Ines said Sophia came flying back into the servants' quarters as if her skirt was afire." Karina looked rather pleased by that tidbit. "Oh, and there was no wailing this time, but after the music stopped, several of the servants claim to have heard the most frightful moaning."
"Indeed?" Hoping to hide both her smile and her blush, Katy pretended to smother another yawn behind her hand.
Karina's eyes grew even rounder. "Sophia told me it sounded as if some poor soul was being tortured to death."
Katy saw herself sprawled half-naked on top of the piano; lying limp and sated with pleasure beneath Hayden's powerful body; on the divan shivering with anticipation as he rose up on his knees behind her. The only death delivered by her husband had been the one the French so eloquently called le petit mort. And it was a death she would gladly die a thousand times at his skillful hands.
