Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) Read Online Free

Carter gave a long sigh. “Please excuse Carlos my… err... miss. He is a trifle impressionable.”
    The giggle passed, leaving Melissa with a tear in her eye. She still couldn’t see, and she was still bound.
    “Would you mind awfully, umm, allowing me to put on my other glasses?” she asked in a low voice. “These ones seem to be rather broken.”
    A rustling of cloth passed to the left of her, and a hand touched her arm. Quickly she shrunk away, shuddering, as the hand withdrew.
    “Ah, about,” Carter’s voice appeared from the direction of the hand. “Um about that—”
    Melissa bit her lip and stilled the shudders. “Don’t worry. You were only acting on orders.” Something she knew a lot about. “Would you allow me to get them myself?”
    “If you don’t I will. Poor girl, sitting there having endured the master and one of his bad moods—”
    “Enough Carlos. Really!” Carter’s hands tentatively touched hers, and this time she held them steady with an iron will as he severed the bonds that tied them together.
    Slowly she felt in her skirts and pulled out her new spectacles, switching them with the brass ones on her nose. Immediately the kitchen came into focus, a kitchen table in front of her, and at the other end of the room by the ovens, three men, leaning away from her as if she was going to explode.
    “I am quite harmless,” she said quietly.
    Slowly the men unbent; Carter, the butler stayed where he was, but one of the cooks inched forward and pushed a plate of biscuits towards her with a hand bound in a large yellow stained white rag.
    “Err, we thought you might be hungry.”
    Delicately Melissa took a biscuit. She choked as a peppery taste filled her mouth.
    Three pairs of eyes watched her every move.
    They gave out a sigh as she took another bite. “Very ’ice,” she said, gulping in air as her tongue caught fire. “Ot happened ooo your ’and?”
    “She ate one of the biscuits!” the other cook whispered audibly, and then gave a hacking cough before continuing, “And she took another bite… she can’t be that bad!”
    Carter groaned. “Carlos burnt his hand on one of the pans when the kitchen boy moved it and the wound hasn’t stopped weeping since. He has refused to see a doctor.”
    “Mmm. Have you tried a paste of Urtica Urens?”
    “Urtica Urens?”
    “Oh. Sorry, stinging nettle paste.”
    Carter narrowed his eyes and stared. “If this is one of your ways of killing people we are not going to fall for it.”
    Melissa sighed and bit into another biscuit. Good heavens, ginger. Thank goodness .
     

CHAPTER 3
     
    Lord Granwich sneezed loudly and pressed a monogrammed handkerchief to his nose.
    “Can’t you get anyone to dust in here, Harding? It’s demmed strange to sit surrounded by moldy old books.” The lord sneezed again and looked balefully over his handkerchief at Hades.
    Hades crossed one long muscular leg over the other and gave Granwich a long hard look, attempting to quell the unsettled feeling the beautiful Viper had given him.
    He hadn’t invited Granwich to come to his house. Hardly anyone was ever granted entry. He shifted in his well-worn leather chair, feeling his body press into its familiar folds. Damn the man. Hades had intended to continue reading  a particularly good book by the Roman historian Polybius about Hannibal and his war against the Pergamums whilst he let the beautiful Viper sweat in the kitchen, but Granwich’s visit had put paid to that. 
    “I like it like this. And those ‘moldy old books’ are what got your men out of trouble in Corunna.” Hades tapped the heavily scuffed book that lay on the oval table next to him. “If you don’t want my help, go away. I did not invite you here.”
    Granwich stepped from side to side, looking round the study with quick glances. Hades scratched at his eyebrows; he hadn’t asked Granwich to sit. The study still sat in a gloom, with only a small oil lamp burning on the oval table by