The Serpent Prince Read Online Free

met the table. “Let’s just say it’ll light a fire under the old boy after all this time. Ha!”
    “How delightful.” Lucy smiled. If Papa ever did finish his memoirs and publish them, there would be a score of apoplectic fits in His Majesty’s navy.
    “Quite. Quite.” Papa swallowed and took a sip of wine. “Now, then. I don’t want you worrying over this scoundrel you’ve brought home.”
    Lucy’s gaze dropped to the fork she held. It trembled slightly, and she hoped her father wouldn’t notice the movement. “No, Papa.”
    “You’ve done a good deed, Samaritan and all that. Just as your mother used to teach you from the Bible. She’d approve. But remember”—he forked up a turnip—“I’ve seen head wounds before. Some live. Some don’t. And there’s not a blessed thing you can do about it either way.”
    She felt her heart sink in her chest. “You don’t think he’ll live?”
    “Don’t know,” Papa barked impatiently. “That’s what I’m saying. He might. He might not.”
    “I see.” Lucy poked at a turnip and tried not to let the tears start.
    Her father slammed the flat of his hand down on the table. “This is just what I’m warning you about. Don’t get attached to the tramp.”
    A corner of Lucy’s mouth twitched up. “But you can’t keep me from feeling,” she said gently. “I’ll do it no matter if I want to or not.”
    Papa frowned ferociously. “Don’t want you to be sad if he pops off in the night.”
    “I’ll do my very best not to be sad, Papa,” Lucy promised. But she knew it was too late for that. If the man died tonight, she would weep on the morrow, promises or no.
    “Humph.” Her father returned to his plate. “Good enough for now. If he survives, though, mark my words.” He looked up and pinned her with his azure eyes. “He even thinks about hurting one hair on your head, and out he goes on his arse.”

Chapter Two
    The angel was sitting by his bed when Simon Iddesleigh, sixth Viscount Iddesleigh, opened his eyes.
    He would’ve thought it a terrible dream, one of an endless succession that haunted him nightly—or worse, that he’d not survived the beating and had made that final infinite plunge out of this world and into the flaming next. But he was almost certain hell did not smell of lavender and starch, did not feel like worn linen and down pillows, did not sound with the chirping of sparrows and the rustle of gauze curtains.
    And, of course, there were no angels in hell.
    Simon watched her. His angel was all in gray, as befit a religious woman. She wrote in a great book, eyes intent, level black brows knit. Her dark hair was pulled straight back from a high forehead and gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck. Her lips pursed slightly as her hand moved across the page. Probably noting his sins. The scratch of the pen on the page was what had woken him.
    When men spoke of angels, especially in the context of the female sex, usually they were employing a flowery fillip of speech. They thought of fair-haired creatures with pink cheeks—both kinds—and red, wet lips. Insipid Italian putti with vacant blue eyes and billowy, soft flesh came to mind. That was not the type of angel Simon contemplated. No, his angel was the biblical kind—Old Testament, not New. The not-quite-human, stern-and-judgmental kind. The type that was more apt to hurl men into eternal damnation with a flick of a dispassionate finger than to float on feathery pigeon wings. She wasn’t likely to overlook a few flaws here and there in a fellow’s character. Simon sighed.
    He had more than just a few flaws.
    The angel must have heard his sigh. She turned her unearthly topaz eyes on him. “Are you awake?”
    He felt her gaze as palpably as if she’d laid a hand on his shoulder, and frankly the feeling bothered him.
    Not that he let his unease show. “That depends on one’s definition of awake, ” he replied in a croak. Even the little movement of speaking made his face