Read Eve Silver for Free Online Page B

for an unsettling moment before he strode from the room, pausing only long enough to ruffle his son’s dark hair.
    Lord Anthony's exit brought the return of Emma's appetite and she proceeded to empty her plate with ladylike precision while discussing Nicky’s favorite topic — horses. Several times she glanced up to find Nicky watching her handling the utensils and copying her movements.
    “Well, Nicky”—Emma placed her knife and fork together on her plate, and smiled when Nicky did the same—”we shall begin your lessons this morning.”
    The child's expression took on a wary cast. Emma rose and crossed to the window. The sun peeked from behind a cloud, shining down on an expanse of manicured lawn.
    “Could you tell me the normal schedule of your day?”
    “Normal schedule?” Nicky echoed.
    “Yes.” Emma glanced over her shoulder at him. “The things you do and the order in which you do them. I should like to practice our letters and numbers before luncheon. But the day is so lovely that perhaps we could spread a blanket and take our lesson outdoors. Do you have a slate?”
    “Outdoors, Miss Emma?” He shook his head vehemently from side to side. “Miss Rust only let me outside for a walk in the afternoon. After lessons were done. And Mrs. Winter never let me out at all.”
    “Not at all, Nicky?” Emma asked with a hint of laughing suspicion in her tone. “Not even to play?”
    Nicky huddled against the back of his chair. “Mrs. Winter said play was evil. Sometimes, she left me alone in the nursery. She told me to kneel and recite my prayers. Then she would go away for a very long time.” He cast a quick glance at Emma, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “If I thought she'd be gone long, I would sneak out to the stables to see the horses. But one time she caught me and switched my legs until they bled. Then Papa sent her away. In a coffin that was nailed up tight.”
    Emma winced at this horrifying tale, even as a dull thud of anger pulsed through her. She thought that if Mrs. Winter were here, she, too, might be tempted to send her away in a pine box.
    “Oh, Nicky,” she whispered, turning fully and kneeling by his chair, touched beyond measure that he had trusted her with this ugly tale. Slowly, she reached out and laid her hand on his head. “I do not have a switch. My mother was a governess. She was very kind, and she taught me that if you work very hard, then you must play very hard. That way you keep a balance in your life. Play is not evil, Nicky. It is a child's way of practicing for the future.”
    “Your mother was a governess?” Nicky asked. “What was your father?”
    The unexpected question caught her off guard, digging at an old wound. A nobleman, she thought. A cad. A man who promised a young girl the world, then left her ruined, pregnant, without so much as a good-bye.
     “My father died a long time ago.” That much was true. He had been crushed to death when the carriage he was racing overturned.
    “Oh. So did my mother.” He glanced at the window and heaved a mighty sigh. “There is Papa now. I wish he had stayed a little longer.”
    Emma rose and turned, her heart doing a strange little dance when she saw Lord Anthony crossing the long drive. The sun glinted off his dark hair as he strode briskly toward Griggs, who stood waiting in the shadow of the tower.
    There's death in the Round Tower, miss. Death in the very air. You stay away from that tower . It seemed that Griggs did not heed his own advice, for there he stood not an arm’s length from the very thing he so feared.
     “Nicky,” Emma said, an inexplicable chill creeping along her spine. “Do you know what is in the tower at the end of the drive?”
    “Yes, Miss Emma.”
    Something in his tone made her turn.
    “Can you tell me?”
    He stared up at her in a way that made her uneasy, his eyes grown wide and wary. Clearly, Griggs was not the only one afraid of the Round Tower.
    “No, Miss Emma,” Nicky said