The Magpie Lord by KJ Charles EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Authors: KJ Charles
- Language: English
- Genre: Victorian Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The grey awful misery tangled round his heart and throat, choking him,
sickening him with the vileness of his own nature. The shame and selfloathing too deep for repentance, too deep for words. Too deep for anything
but the knife and the red flow and the longed-for emptiness of the end…
The voice seemed to come from a long distance away. “My lord? My
lord! Oh, Jesus. My lord! You stupid sod!”
A slap, hard, round his face. He registered it through the haze of grey
misery, then felt strong hands dragging him onto his feet and out of the
room. His wrist hurt. He needed to finish the job.
He lunged clumsily back towards the knife, only to find his arm twisted
up behind his back and a hard tug pulling him off balance.
“Out. This way.” He was marched forward, pushed, dragged, the litany
of doom pounding in his mind. All he could think of was ending it, making
the unbearable guilt and shame stop, removing the foul stain of his soul
from the world…
He vaguely noticed the hard grip on the back of his head, just before his
face was plunged into icy, greasy water and held there, ruthlessly hard, as
he inhaled a lungful of dirty dishwater, and something around his mind
snapped.
Lord Crane jerked his head out of the suddenly relaxed grip, came up
spluttering but entirely alert, gasped for air, and kicked backwards
viciously, aiming to cripple his attacker with a rake of his foot across the
kneecap. The grizzled man in black had already jumped out of the way,
though, and was standing back, holding up his hands in a gesture of
nonaggression that Crane had no intention of testing.
Crane held himself ready to fight for a second, registered that he had just
been half-drowned in the butler’s sink by his manservant, let out a long
breath and dropped his shoulders.
“It happened again,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Tsaena.” He shook his head, sending grey water flying from his hair,
and blinked the liquid out of his eyes.
Merrick threw him a dishtowel. He caught it in his left hand, sucked in a
hiss at the pain as his wrist moved, and mopped his face. He spat in the sink
to get the taste of foul water and bitter leaves out of his mouth. “Son of a
bitch. It happened again.”
“Yes,” said Merrick, with some restraint. “I know. I found you sawing at
your wrist with a fucking table knife, my lord, which was what gave me the
clue.”
“Yes, alright.” Crane pulled over a chair with a screech of wood on tile.
“Can you…?” He gestured at his left wrist. The shirt cuff was unfastened
and rolled back. He didn’t remember doing that. He didn’t remember the
other times.
Merrick was already setting out lint and a roll of bandages, as well as a
bottle of volatile-smelling spirit.
“I’ll have some if you’re pouring. Ow.”
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