Beyond Rubies (Daughters of Sin Book 4) by Beverley Oakley Page B

for having gone after her dreams and achieving what the rest of her family had not: wealth and respectability.
    The room was in darkness, but the window was open, and a slight breeze rustled the curtains, bathing part of the capacious four-poster bed in light from the large, waxing moon outside.
    With each step toward the bed, Kitty divested herself of one more article of clothing. She’d be completely naked by the time she slid in beside Nash, she decided. Darling Nash, who appeared to be murmuring in his sleep as he sometimes did. Occasionally, even, he’d thrash about, which he suddenly began to do now. Kitty always comforted him after these nightmares which he said he’d had for as long as he could remember, and somehow it endeared him to Kitty even more. She liked to think of herself as somewhere between his muse and the woman who brought him peace and, yes, comfort.
    But then another odd noise jarred a discordant note in the stillness. A throaty purr of satisfaction. Feminine. Kitty stopped a couple of feet from the bed and strained to see in the darkness. She could make out Nash’s handsome head upon the pillow, turned toward the window, and the mound of his body beneath the bedclothes. He gave a soft groan, and Kitty smiled. She’d make him moan even more throatily before long. She’d removed her gown. The four buttons at the back and her front-laced short stays meant she could dress and undress on her own, and relatively quickly, which was what she was doing now, her fingers eagerly loosening the ribbons of her corsetry so that she was only in her chemise when she climbed beneath the covers
    Her arrival created more of a stir than she’d expected. Nash jerked upright with a cry, but it wasn’t his surprise that jolted Kitty to the very core. No, it was the wriggling beneath Kitty of a second body followed by a sharp, feminine shriek when Jennie’s head emerged from where, Kitty now realized, she’d been attending to pleasuring her darling Nash’s nether regions.
    The two women looked at each other with horror and loathing. Nash, meanwhile, was choking out some kind of excuse. Apology. Kitty didn’t wait to hear it. Gathering her discarded clothes into her arms as she made her sobbing progress from the bed to the door, she dashed into the passageway, ignoring his shout of pain as she slammed the door and obviously caught some tender piece of his body in the process.
    Barely able to breathe, she stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen, crying as she clumsily put on her stays over her chemise in front of the fire. Susan blinked at her owlishly, crawling up from her pallet to help Kitty slip first her petticoat over her head and then her evening gown.
    Kitty had lost one shoe along the way, but she wasn’t going back for it. Her complacency and confidence in Nash’s love had been shattered, and she couldn’t face him right now. She knew he’d come after her. Well, she was reasonably certain he would. He’d try and bluster his way through it. Maybe he’d say he’d mistaken Jennie for Kitty. All Kitty knew was that this was her greatest betrayal, and she had to get away immediately and gather her thoughts.
    “I’ll be all right,” she told Susan as she flung herself out of the door and into the dark street, hobbling in only one shoe, and only realizing as the cool night air grazed her cheek that she had nowhere to go. Where did Lissa live? She had no idea. Walking alone in the darkness was madness. The only place she had to go was Mrs. Mobbs’s. She fumbled in her reticule. Thank the lord she had just enough to pay for the journey. And hopefully standing on the cobbles in such a respectable area was not immediately perilous. At least, it wouldn’t be as perilous as if she were standing in the street outside Mrs. Mobbs’s where she felt she could not return to disturb her irascible landlady a second time in one night.
    Still wracked with sobs, she waited, but no passing hackney offered