Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read Online Free Page B

question, had in fact questioned his sense of justice and cast aspersions on his integrity.
    He had his faults like anyone, but Ki had never been able to ignore a lady in distress.
    This inability was, in his mother’s estimation, a regrettable weakness and one of the main reasons she had intervened in the Mirabella matter. His mother thought he was just too sensitive for his own good, making himself an easy target for people with unscrupulous motives.
    Ki couldn’t imagine Lucy Peyton having unscrupulous motives. Her letter had seemed so…sincere. Perhaps his mother was right and his judgment couldn’t be trusted. He’d never been so taken with anyone before, especially someone he hadn’t yet met.
    He closed his eyes now, trying to picture what Lucy Peyton looked like and couldn’t.
    Knowing his uncle as he did and something in his mother’s whole attitude about Ki going out to Elk Creek told him that his uncle’s widow was a young woman, certainly much younger than Uncle Rance had been. This conclusion led Ki to wonder what would make a young woman, any woman, choose to marry a man like his uncle.
    According to his mother, Lucy had to be some kind of fortune hunter, more than likely some local yokel hoping to elevate her station in life marrying a besotted older man who would leave her everything he owned upon his death.
    Uncle Rance’s will must have been quite a shock to little Mrs. Peyton. She probably thought she had struck it rich at his death, that she would get everything free and clear, but Uncle Rance had exercised cunning and must not have been as besotted as Lucy had hoped.
    Ki conceded that fortune hunters of this ilk—the ambitious bumpkins, the scheming gold diggers, the aspiring socialites—must lurk around many corners, infiltrating plenty of social circles, just as his mother maintained. He just didn’t want to believe that Lucy Peyton fell into this mercenary category of con artists and frauds.
    “Hezekiah, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you put a stop to your woolgathering this instant.”
    “I must apologize, Mother. I’m not quite myself this evening.”
    “And you haven’t been since you received that letter.”
    Ki didn’t answer, didn’t know what more to say.
    “You never answered me, Ki. What is it you find so special about this woman you have still to meet?”
    “I’m not sure yet.”
    He intended to find out soon enough, though.

Chapter 3
     
    Lucy jerked up in bed and flung off the covers with an unaccustomed grumble.
    She hadn’t slept well. She’d tossed and turned most of the night, thinking about the mess her life was in and wondering what she was going to do to straighten it out.
    She should have slept like the dead, seeing as how tired she was once she’d gotten home from an evening shift at Winchester’s after a daytime shift at Healing Magick. This had been her routine for the last several months as she tried to make enough money to meet her current needs and save for her future. She wanted to eventually get a little place of her own, rather than live at Sabrina’s boarding house, but Sabrina insisted that as long as she had a place to stay, Lucy had a place to stay. The sentiment was awful generous, but Lucy wanted something in this world that belonged just to her and a place to rest her head at night was a good start.
    She hadn’t totally given up on overturning her husband’s convoluted last will and testament that left her nothing unless she agreed to meet certain stipulations. Agreeing to the stipulations felt a little like selling her soul to the devil at this point, and she was so tired of being traded back and forth like chattel.
    Lucy wanted to settle down and have a normal life like all the other women she saw in Elk Creek pushing baby carriages with devoted and loving husbands by their sides. She hadn’t totally given up on that dream despite her unworthiness in Rance’s eyes. Not being worthy didn’t mean she didn’t want or