Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) by Alexa Egan

extended. “A stiff wind would blow that man away.”
    “He’s not skinny. He’s wiry,” Miss Hayes, Mrs. Commin’s timid friend, said in Mr. Paisley’s defense. “And his mother is very nice.”
    “Are we chatting or playing?” Lady Grigson complained. “I’m not getting any younger.”
    The elderly dowager viscountess had been one of the few Society women to buck prejudice andaccept Sarah upon her shocking marriage to the earl. A plainspoken woman with a gimlet glare and connections to every important family in England, she spoke of Lord Deane’s mother as “that upstart mill owner’s daughter” and assured Sarah that Sebastian had enough money to buy entrée for his wife were she a gypsy from Timbuktu.
    “Of course. It’s your play.” Sarah turned back to her cards but not before Bianca threw her a threatening we’ll-talk-later glare.
    She looked down upon the horrid scrawl with a sigh. Perhaps she was jumping the gun by writing to Mr. Jones at Dublin’s Crow Street Theatre. But a few months in Ireland might be just the change she needed. A new city. A new job. A new start. She’d not look too closely at why she’d chosen a theater in Dublin above theater companies closer to home. It certainly had nothing to do with a certain Irish army captain.
    “. . . they call him the Ghost Earl. Isn’t that delightfully thrilling?” Sarah gushed. “Such a mystery.”
    “The de Coursy family has always been a bit eccentric,” Mrs. Commin commented between tricks.
    The women’s chatter drew Bianca back from the treacherous train of her thoughts. She listened, halfheartedly dabbling at the page with her pen.
    “You mean mad as a house of hatters,” stated Lady Grigson. “Obviously Gray de Coursy hasn’t fallen far from that tree.”
    Bianca sat up. Why did that name sound familiar? Where had she heard it before?
    “I heard the duke cast him off completely last year,” Sarah said.
    “Maybe so, but the Duke of Morieux can’t stop the major from being heir now, can he?” Lady Grigson remarked, sounding like the voice of doom. “Besides, the duke should feel fortunate he still has an heir. Never wanted the boy to go for an officer. And from all I’ve heard, he was in the thick of things through most of the war.”
    The duke . . . Gray de Coursy . . . An officer . . . Of course. Adam’s journal.
    Gray’s name had figured throughout the pages.
    The gossip was interrupted by Sebastian’s arrival, which turned the conversation away from de Coursy. Bianca concentrated once more on her sad muddle of a letter just as a shadow fell across the desk.
    “Catching up on your correspondence?”
    She looked up into the earl’s quizzical face. One could be forgiven thinking Sebastian Commin past his prime when assessing his craggy features and gray-streaked dark hair. But then one noticed the broad-shouldered build of a pugilist beneath the elegant clothes and the shrewdness in his fiery gold gaze, and knew to tread very carefully.
    “It began as a letter,” she answered. “I’m afraid it’s ended as fuel for the fire.”
    His eyes passed over her scribbling, his mild look of interest sharpening. “A strange little drawing there.”
    She followed his gaze to find she’d unconsciously sketched the crescent symbol over and over along the bottom of the paper. Shocked, she placed a hand over the page. “It’s nothing. Just a mark I glimpsed recently.”
    “Did you?” His gaze grew solemn, his gold-flecked eyes burning brightly. “Step across to my study, Bianca. I’d like to show you something.”
    She rose and accepted his arm, the two of them passing through the corridor, past a pair of salons, to a dark-paneled door. Sebastian took a key from his pocket, fitting it into the lock, and pushed the door wide for her to enter ahead of him.
    The book-lined room smelled of leather and parchment and ink and cheroot smoke. Knickknacks and curiosities lay scattered among the shelves and upon every