To Desire a Devil Read Online Free Page A

men and smiled grimly. “A lunatic cannot unseat Blanchard. And in any case, no one has
     proved he’s Hope. There is no cause for alarm.”
    Hasselthorpe sipped his wine, outwardly cool and composed, while inside he acknowledged the unfinished end to his sentence.
    There was no cause for alarm… yet.
    I T HAD TAKEN four footmen to lift Viscount Hope, and even now they staggered under his weight. Beatrice watched the men carefully as she
     and her uncle trailed behind them, worried they might let him fall. She’d persuaded Uncle Reggie to take the unconscious man
     to an unused bedroom, although her uncle had been far from happy with the matter. Uncle Reggie had initially been of a mind
     to toss him into the street. She took a more cautious view, not only from Christian charity, but also from the niggling worry
     that if this was Lord Hope, they’d hardly help their case by throwing him out.
    The footmen staggered into the hall with their burden. Hope was thinner than in his portrait, but he was still a very tall
     man—over six feet, Beatrice estimated. She shivered. Fortunately, he’d not regained consciousness after glaring at her so
     evilly. Otherwise she wasn’t sure they would’ve been able to move him at all.
    “Viscount Hope is dead,” Uncle Reggie muttered as he trotted beside her. He didn’t sound as if he believed his protest himself.
     “Dead these seven years!”
    “Please, Uncle, don’t let your temper fly,” Beatrice said anxiously. He hated being reminded of it, but Uncle Reggie had had
     an attack of apoplexy just last month—an attack that had absolutely terrified her. “Remember what the doctor said.”
    “Oh, pshaw! I’m as fit as a fiddle, despite what that quack thinks,” Uncle Reggie said stoutly. “I know you have a soft heart,
     m’dear, but this can’t be Hope. Three men swore they saw him die, murdered by those savages in the American Colonies. One
     of them was Viscount Vale, his friend since childhood!”
    “Well, they were obviously wrong,” Beatrice murmured. She frowned as the panting footmen mounted the wide dark-oak stairs
     ahead of them. The bedrooms were all on the town house’s third floor. “Mind his head!”
    “Yes, miss,” George, the eldest footman, replied.
    “If that is Hope, then he’s lost his mind,” Uncle Reggie huffed as they made the upper hall. “He was raving in French, of
     all things. About his father! And I know absolutely that the last earl died five years ago. Attended his funeral m’self. You’ll
     not convince me the old earl’s alive, too.”
    “Yes, Uncle,” Beatrice replied. “But I don’t believe the viscount knows his father is dead.”
    She felt a pang for the unconscious man. Where had Lord Hope been all these years? How had he gotten those strange tattoos?
     And why didn’t he know his father was dead? Dear God, maybe her uncle was right. Maybe the viscount’s mind was broken.
    Uncle Reggie gave voice to her awful thoughts. “The man is insane; that’s clear. Raving. Attacking you. I say, shouldn’t you
     lie down, m’dear? I can send for some of those lemon sweets you like so much, damn the cost.”
    “That’s very kind of you, Uncle, but he didn’t get close enough to lay a hand on me,” Beatrice murmured.
    “Wasn’t for lack of trying!”
    Uncle Reggie stared disapprovingly as the footmen bore the viscount into the scarlet bedroom. It was only the second-nicest
     guest bedroom, and for a moment Beatrice had a pang of doubt. If this was Viscount Hope, then surely he merited the first-nicest
     guest bedroom? Or was the point moot since if he was Lord Hope, then he really ought to be in the earl’s bedroom, which, of
     course, Uncle Reggie slept in? Beatrice shook her head. The whole thing was too complicated for words, and, in any case, the
     scarlet bedroom would have to do for now.
    “The man ought to be in a madhouse,” Uncle Reggie was saying. “Might murder us all in our sleep when he wakes.
If
he