Murder on Black Friday Read Online Free Page A

racks—portraits and street scenes, mostly, a few interiors.
    “Nell, I’m...awestruck,” he said after he’d viewed them all. “Your handling of light is incredible. These paintings—they glow from within. Why have you never shown me these before?”
    “You’ve never been to the house before—not since I’ve lived here.” Nell turned back to the canvas she was sizing as her face suffused with heat.
    “Are you blushing?” There was amusement in his voice as he came up behind her. He liked to make her redden, then tease her about it, and it wasn’t hard, with her coloring. Although she wasn’t quite a redhead, her hair being a sort of rust-stained brown, she was cursed with the volatile complexion of that breed—pale, translucent skin that sizzled at the drop of an innuendo.
    “You are, aren’t you?” he asked.
    “No.” There was something about blushing with pride from Will’s praise that made her feel particularly exposed, as if that which lay in the deepest recesses of her heart were emblazoned in scarlet all over her face for the entire world to see.
    “I think you are.” He was standing so close that his legs rustled the silk faille skirt beneath her smock frock. “What the devil...?”
    Her scalp tickled as he slid one of the filbert brushes out of the twist of hair at her nape, loosening it. “Ah, the ever practical Miseeney,” he chuckled.
    “You’re making it come undone,” Nell said over her shoulder, the movement causing the chignon to unfurl heavily down her back. She bent to retrieve the second brush as it clattered onto the slate.
    “I’ve got it,” Will said as he stooped to pick it up, bracing a hand on his bad leg.
    Nell glanced back over her shoulder, reaching for the brushes.
    “Allow me.” Slipping the brushes into his coat pocket, he shook out the rope of hair and slowly combed his fingers through it, sending little shivers of pleasure into her scalp.
    “You know how to put a lady’s hair up?” she asked, heavy-lidded from the gentle pulling and tugging.
    “I know quite a few things I probably shouldn’t.” Will gathered up her hair, his long fingers grazing the back of her neck, and twisted the thick, wavy hank into a knot. She wished it didn’t feel as good as it did, because she wanted it to go on and on, whereas she probably shouldn’t even be letting him do it. It was a rather intimate thing for a gentleman to do for a lady, the sort of thing one might do for a wife. Or a mistress.
    Nell should know, having been more than a nurse to Dr. Greaves even though she already had a husband. The fact that Duncan, who was serving thirty years for armed robbery and aggravated assault, had brutalized her unmercifully, mitigated the sin to some extent. Even kindly old Father Donnelly, who’d counseled Nell in her futile attempt to secure an annulment, had conceded as much during her weekly confessions.
    Of course, a liaison of that nature was unthinkable in Nell’s present circumstances, and not just because she still had a husband in Charleston State Prison—a fact known only to Will and her current confessor, Father Gorman at St. Stephen’s. Viola had made it clear five years ago, when she asked the presumably unwed “Miss Sweeney” to serve as governess to her adopted infant, that she expected Nell not only to conduct herself with the utmost propriety, but to forswear marriage while Gracie was young, in order to devote her full attention to her charge. She no doubt still expected it, notwithstanding Nell’s friendship with Will, which the rest of Boston society took to be an unofficial betrothal—an assumption Will encouraged, since it permitted Will to spend time with Nell and his daughter without raising eyebrows. Only Viola and August—and, of course, Father Gorman—knew that the courtship was just a façade. They were also the only people in Boston, aside from Nell and Will, who knew that the chambermaid’s baby Viola Hewitt was rearing as her own had