Devil's Mistress

By Georgeanne Hayes

Emma knows she’s ruined when ‘Devil’ Devereaux takes her to his townhouse, but she has nowhere to go and no options but to concede when he offers her an indecent proposal. She quickly discovers, though, that she doesn’t feel nearly as wicked about being a fallen woman as she had thought she would.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Concepts Publishing
• Release date: Aug 20, 2021

Book preview

DEVIL’S MISTRESS

BY

GEORGEANNE HAYES

© copyright by Madris DePasture writing as Georgeanne Hayes, 2021

Cover Art by Jenny Dixon 2021

ISBN 978-1-60394-

Smashwords Edition

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

Go! Get out of my house! bellowed the stranger with her father’s face through clenched teeth.

Emma stared at him uncomprehendingly, unable to even absorb what he had said let alone understand. She almost felt more as if each word was a blow instead of speech.

He was in his cups. He had been drinking steadily since her mother’s funeral. With every word he threw at her, she caught a strong whiff of spirits, but she still couldn’t comprehend what had thrown him into such a fury.

I have had to look at you—be reminded every time I saw you of that cheating whore I married for the past eighteen years and more. She’s dead and buried now. I will endure it no longer! Leave before I have you thrown out!

He grasped her arm when she still didn’t move, hauled her toward the front door and shoved her out so hard she nearly sprawled out on the stoop. But … where? she finally managed to gasp, too hurt and bewildered to gather her thoughts.

I do not care, you bastard. Find your father. Perhaps he’ll take you in.

He slammed the door in her face before she had the chance to ask who her father was.

She stared at the vibrating door for some moments, trying to shake the shock and terror and think, but it was useless. Her mind, her entire system, was in a state of turmoil where bits and pieces of things swirled around and made no sense—images and words.

She looked around a little vaguely after standing at the door for a time, as if some answer would magically appear, and finally managed to make her way down the steps to the walkway.

She was still draped entirely in black, she saw when she looked down at herself numbly, for her mother had been buried little more than a week earlier—carried away by some fever the doctor never identified.

She almost felt as if she was caught up in some kind of delirium herself, unable to comprehend anything that had happened—hot one moment, freezing the next so that her teeth chattered together.

She had nothing with her, not even her purse.

Not that she had anything in it. She could not recall the last time she had been given so much as a pence for spending money.

It flickered through her mind—very briefly—to turn back and ask if she might have cab fair to take her away from his house—a few of her belongings—but she did not think she was up to facing more of what she already had. And, in any case, she had no notion where to go.

Beyond that, his temper had seemed so out of control that she was afraid he might beat her if she bothered him.

Maybe she had no belongings if she had no home and no mother and now no father?

She frowned at that. He had said she should find her father—Her mother was a whore and she was a bastard.

He was not her father.

Struggling with that, she began to walk with no notion of where she was going beyond ‘away’.

She was tired and had begun to feel the sting of blisters on her feet long before she spied the park, but she realized that that was a place to go. There would be benches where she could sit and rest and perhaps something would come to her?

She was hot and thirsty from her walk before she found a bench. It was fully exposed to bright sunlight and not particularly appealing so she kept walking until she found one that was in a little shade. She passed people as she was searching, aware that they were speaking, or perhaps commenting on her, but not really hearing them.

She felt … numb.

Except her throat was parched and her feet and legs hurt.

Swallowing with an effort since she had no notion of where she might find water, she settled, ramrod straight as she’d been taught, and stared at the park around her—seeing nothing.

She had nowhere to go.

She had no family.

She had no friends.

She had no money.

She could not even think of anywhere she might go as a short time solution.

If she had money, she might be able to convince a hotel to allow her to stay, although, dimly, she realized the fact that she was alone would create a problem with even that.

Young ladies were never unattended—especially in establishments like that.

No where outside of their home.

Those thoughts brought on a fresh wave of terror.

She was alone. She was not safe now. Once it got dark and the lawless began to move around looking for trouble ….

She could not think about that!

Nightmarish images chased through her head.

She should have no notion of such things, but she had spent most of her life around the servants and they told all sorts of horrible tales. She had always suspected a good bit of embroidering, that they’d told them as lessons, but she did not know that that was the case. The tales might have been unvarnished—in which case, she had to consider the possibility of learning first hand.

And that was a terrifying thought.

She was trying to think where it might be safe to hide herself to sleep through the night when she noticed that the sun had traveled all the way across the sky. Already it was beginning to dip below the very tops of the trees and the buildings of the city that surrounded the park. It would be dark before much longer and she still didn’t know where to go or what to do.

Such terror gripped her then that she could not think at all for many moments.

She might have sprang up from the bench if she had not experienced a flood of knee weakening adrenaline that made her feel faint.

As luck would have it, she discovered just about that time that there were two, poorly dressed, noticeably drunken, ruffians meandering down the side walk directly toward her.

She dragged her gaze from them immediately and studied her hands in her lap, hoping against hope that they would simply pass by her.

They didn’t. They stopped directly in front of her. She stared at the two filthy pairs of feet, feeling like she might faint, struggling to prod her mind into action to save herself.

"Now what, I wonder, is a