Excellent.
“Never mind the curtains, you milk-livered, flap-mouthed dotard.” He loomed over the bed. “There aren’t any windows in Hell.”
“No. No, this can’t be.”
Ash stepped back at once. “Oh, it can’t? Perhaps I have the wrong house.” He drew a scrap of something from his pocket and peered down at it. “Vicarage . . . Buggerton, Hertfordshire . . .”
“This is Bellington.”
Ash straightened the paper and made a show of peering at it. “Yes, you’re right. Bellington, Hertfordshire. Reverend George Gladstone. That’s not you?”
The old man moaned. “It’s me.”
“Thank Pluto.” He crumpled the paper and cast it to the floor. “Such a nuisance when I cock these things up. It’s a devil of a delay when there’s so much to be done. Once you arrive in the eternal furnace, there are sinful debts to be settled. ‘Hell to pay’ is not merely a saying. Then there are the endless papers to be signed and filed.”
“Papers to be filed?”
“Naturally there are papers. It should surprise no one to learn that Hell is a vast, inefficient bureaucracy.”
“I suppose not,” the old man said meekly.
“Now where was I? Oh, yes.” He lifted the lantern and made his voice an unholy crescendo. “Prepare for eternal hellfire!”
“B-but I’m a vicar! I have been a faithful servant of the Lord.”
“Liar!”
The clergyman quivered. A dark puddle seeped across the dimly lit bed linens, and one sniff told Ashbury what it was. The craven piece of filth had pissed the bed.
“You are the veriest varlet that ever took to the pulpit. Doesn’t your Holy Bible have something to say about forgiveness?”
The man cowered in silence.
“No, truly. I’m asking. Doesn’t it? I’m a demon, I don’t read the thing.”
“Y-yes, of course. The gospel is a story of grace and redemption.”
Ash stepped toward the foot of the bed, until he loomed over the shrinking reverend, and lifted the lantern high. “Then why, you rank, miserable, piss-soaked serpent, did you fail to offer that grace to your own daughter?”
“Emma?”
“Yes, Emma.” His heart wrenched when he spoke her name, and his voice shook with fury. “Your own flesh and blood. Wasn’t she worthy of this forgiveness you preach?”
“Forgiveness requires penitence. She was warned. Given every explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted in her sinful behavior, and she would not repent of it.”
“She was a girl. Vulnerable. Trusting. Afraid. You threw her to the wolves to protect your own selfish, sinful pride. And you call yourself a man of God. You are nothing but a charlatan.”
“Tell me what I can do to atone. I’ll do anything. Anything.”
“There is nothing you can say. No excuse you can make.”
Ash drew a slow, deep breath. If he were here to satisfy his own wishes, he would have happily killed the old fellow here and now. Dispatched him to Hell in truth. But he hadn’t come all this way to take his own bloody revenge.
He was here for Emma.
Because she’d touched him, kissed him, made him feel human and wanted and whole. Because her disgusting coward of a father had hurt her so deeply, she still didn’t trust her own heart.
Because he was probably halfway in love with her—and wasn’t that the Devil’s bollocks.
For her sake, he would confine his vengeance to methods involving fewer sharp objects and entrails. He would let the man keep his life. But Ash would do his worst to make certain he didn’t enjoy it.
“What day is this?” Ash demanded.
“Th-Thursday.”
He shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”
“But . . . aren’t you damned already?”
“Silence!” he boomed.
The man jumped in his skin.
“I have the day wrong. You’ve a reprieve. A brief reprieve.”
“A reprieve?” He cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Thank you, Lord.”
“Don’t thank the Lord. You should be grateful to me.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Know this, you mammering canker-blossom.” Ash skirted the bed in ominous steps. “We will meet again. You will not know the year, nor the day, nor the hour. In the cold of every night, you will feel the flames licking at your heels. Your daily porridge will taste of sulfur. With every breath, every step, every heartbeat in the remainder of your miserable, lumpish life . . . you will quiver with unrelenting fear.”
He went to the window and prepared to climb through it, disappearing into the night. “Because I will come for you. And when I do, there will be no escape.”
Why, you little thief.
Though Ash had to admit—as thieves went, this was a deuced pretty one.
His morning had been filled with dreary correspondence. Once he’d sent off a contract to the solicitors for yet another revision, Ash had gone in search of luncheon. Then he’d returned to his library—only to find his wife ransacking his bookshelves.
Apparently the volume in her hands was sufficiently absorbing that she hadn’t noticed his presence. As he stood in the doorway watching, she tucked a stray wisp of dark hair behind her ear. Then she licked her fingertip and turned the page.
His knees buckled. In his mind, he scrambled to piece that half second into a lasting memory. The crook of her slender finger. The red pout of her lips. That fleeting, erotic glimpse of pink.
She did it again.
Ash gripped the doorjamb so hard, his knuckles lost sensation.
He wanted her to read the whole cursed book while he watched.
He wanted the book to have a thousand pages.
She closed the volume and added it to a growing stack on the chair. Then, turning her back to him, she stretched on tiptoe to reach for another. Her heels popped out of her slippers, revealing the arches of her feet and those indescribably arousing white stockings.
God’s blood. A man could only take so much.
“Don’t move.”
She froze. Her arm remained lifted; her hand was still poised to take a green volume from its shelf. “I only wanted a book.”
“Don’t,” he repeated, “move.”
“A novel, poetry. Something to pass the time. I thought perhaps I’d even try some Shakespeare. I didn’t mean to disturb—”
“Stay. Just. As. You. Are.” He approached her in slow, deliberate paces—one step for each low, deliberate word. “Not one finger. Not one toe. Not one tiny freckle on your arse.”
“I don’t have freckles on my . . . Do I?”
He didn’t stop until he stood directly behind her. He reached to cover her raised hand. With a flex of his fingers, he tipped the green book into place.
“I’ll