Page 7 of The Forsaken

Andromena and Edgar looked in the direction of those anguish-filled shouts.

“He took her.” Fleur’s cry filled the winter sky. “Culross! It is his men.”

He took her.

Culross.

His men…

Their breaths coming fast, she and the viscount looked at each other at the exact same time.

And time did an unusual thing: where it froze, reversed, and rolled forward, so Andromena saw it all play out as clear as a Shakespearean tragedy. Edgar, Viscount Kerr’s timely arrival. His initial annoyance. His lightning-like shift to seductive rogue. And Andromena all but swooning over him.

Oh, God.

What a fool.

Heart beating fast, Andromena unclasped her cloak and escaped from the material just as Edgar, Lord Kerr, grabbed for her.

She scrambled. He was taller, longer, faster, but he slipped.

As she bolted through the snow, putting more and more distance between them, she didn’t look back.

Afraid he’d be right there to snatch her. Even more, afraid to face his smug, traitorous face at having so easily deceived her.

And maybe that was why she didn’t raise the cry until she was far away from him. “Campbell!”

“Annnnnnnndy!”

Soon, her eldest brother was there and sweeping her into his arms, and asking dozens of times without allowing her to answer if she was all right, and naturally, she lied, because to admit to her family what a fool she’d been, she’d never be able to hold her head high.

Fortunately, she was a very good liar. “P-Perfectly f-fine.”

But this time, her assurances weren’t enough for her big brother or herself.

Campbell swept his cloak around her shoulders and then lifted her, carrying her back to the main road, shouting for his men. While he walked, she huddled into the fur folds of her brother’s cloak. Edgar, the enigmatic privateer she dreamt about in the dark hours of the night had broken her girlish heart. What a gigantic fool she was—or had been.

“…Ah, but receive it you shall, Andromena. Forgive me, For my part, I may speak it to my shame, I have a truant been to chivalry…”

His truancy to chivalry made complete sense, now.

Andromena angled a look around her brother’s arm to the ridge the viscount had vanished from moments ago.

Great evil had been done this day.

That blackhearted bastard had feigned affection, stolen her first kiss from her, all with the intent of having her willingly go off with him. How he must be laughing at her even now?

And one thing was certain, Andromena would hate him forever.

Chapter 1

The Rookeries

Just outside the Devil’s Den

Spring, 1822

On this freezing-bollocks-cold night, Edgar Hollis, Viscount Kerr, took his leave of London’s seediest hell in St. Giles’s: the Devil’s Den.