Playing With Fire (26 page)

Books by C.J. Archer:

The Wrong Girl (Freak House #1)

The Medium (Emily Chambers Spirit Medium #1)

Possession (Emily Chambers Spirit Medium #2)

Evermore (Emily Chambers Spirit Medium #3)

The Charmer (Assassins Guild Novel #1)

Her Secret Desire (Lord Hawkesbury's Players #1)

Scandal's Mistress (Lord Hawkesbury's Players #2)

To Tempt The Devil (Lord Hawkesbury's Players #3)

Honor Bound (The Witchblade Chronicles Book #1)

Kiss Of Ash (The Witchblade Chronicles #2)

Courting His Countess

Surrender

Redemption

The Mercenary's Price

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C.J. Archer has loved history and books for as long as she can remember. She worked as a librarian and technical writer until she was able to channel her twin loves by writing historical fiction. She has won and placed in numerous romance writing contests, including taking home RWAustralia’s Emerald Award in 2008 for the manuscript that would become her novel
Honor Bound
. Under the name Carolyn Scott, she has published contemporary romantic mysteries, including
Finders Keepers Losers Die
, and
The Diamond Affair
. After spending her childhood surrounded by the dramatic beauty of outback Queensland, she lives today in suburban Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and their two children.

She loves to hear from readers.  You can contact her in one of these ways:

Website:
http://cjarcher.com

Email:
[email protected]

Twitter:
@cj_archer

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/CJArcherAuthorPage

Look out for

Heart Burn

The third book in the first FREAK HOUSE TRILOGY.

Will Hannah and Jack ever find peace together? Find out in the heart-stopping final installment of the 1st Freak House Trilogy.

To be notified when C.J. has a new release, sign up to her newsletter. Send an email to
mailto:[email protected]

In the meantime, have you read KISS OF ASH? Here's the description. Read on for an excerpt.

Pippa Ingleside will do anything to escape her ruthless uncle, but even she is surprised when her previously dormant powers aid her. Surprised and afraid. Her newly discovered abilities may have saved her but they condemn her at the same time.

Disguised as a boy, she travels to the home of Lord Ashbourne to find her one and only friend. To maintain her disguise and put a roof over her head, Pippa accepts a job as page of the wardrobe to Ash, a man as mysterious as he is dangerous. If he discovers her lie, he'll send her back to her uncle and her witchcraft will be exposed to the authorities.

As the lies build it gets harder for Pippa to maintain her disguise, especially when she falls in love with the man she must serve.

Her only hope is to find her friend. But when the friend is murdered, Ash investigates and where he goes, his page goes too. Together they uncover a web of secrets that could destroy Ash and condemn Pippa. But that's nothing compared to what happens when he discovers she's a woman...

An Excerpt from KISS OF ASH

(c) C.J. Archer

CHAPTER 1

1583 – Berkshire, England

She would kill him.

Pippa Ingleside crumpled the documents in her fist and slammed them down on the desk, rattling quills and ink horns and her own fragile nerves.  The swine!  The thieving scoundrel!  She'd known he was a black-hearted cur but to steal on such a grand scale was low indeed.  She wouldn't have believed her uncle capable of it if the evidence wasn't written on those pages.  And from his own niece too.

She flattened out the documents and scanned the figures on the first one again, then the second and third just to be sure.  Anger rose with each page so that by the time she read the last one, she was almost blinded by sheer rage and the frustrating hopelessness of it all.  It had been five years since she'd felt the same spirit-crushing emotions.  Five long years that had slowly and consistently worn her down, drip by drip, until all that was left was a hole where something solid had been.

Then, as now, there was nothing she could do.  That realization crushed her more than anything else.  As Simon's ward she was completely at his mercy.  As his prisoner, even more so.  She could do nothing about his theft.  She couldn't go to the authorities, couldn't appeal to another family member even if there were any. 

Not long after her arrival, he'd locked her inside the confines of The Grange with only old Widow Dawson for company during the afternoons.  But even that had been denied her after Pippa's two unsuccessful escape attempts.  Although she'd never stopped looking for a means to get away, never stopped cursing her predicament, she'd always longed to know
why
.  What did he gain by her trapped presence?  He couldn't have been saving her for marriage because he never presented any candidates to her. 

But now she knew.  The documents had given her the answer.

"What are you doing in here?"

She stood so fast the chair she'd been sitting on fell back with a soft thud onto the rushes.  Her uncle, filling the doorway with his bulk, glared at her.  She gathered her wits and courage and prepared to confront him.

But he strode into the study and snatched the documents from her hand before she found her voice.  "I said, what are you doing?" 

He towered over her, anger making him seem bigger.  He seethed with it.  She'd never seen him so furious and her own rage subsided beneath the unnatural ferocity of his glare.  Normally he did everything in such a controlled, cold manner.  On the rare occasions he spoke to her, he never so much as raised his voice.  He shouted at the servants regularly, even beat them sometimes, but to Pippa he was a silent, morose figure who avoided interacting with her.  If it had been different, if he had funneled his infamous rages onto her, she could never have endured the last five years.

"Well?"  His ruddy complexion had turned a violent mottled red, a stark contrast to the snow-white of his hair and beard.  "Answer me, you stupid girl!  What are you doing in
my
study?"  He emphasized the "my" by smacking the rolled up pages against the palm of his hand.

"I, I..."  Fear made her tongue useless.  She watched the pages as they thumped into Simon's hand over and over, like a club he would use to hit something.

Hit her.

No, he wouldn't do it.  He'd never laid a finger on her, even when she'd railed at him for weeks after informing her that she could never leave The Grange.  Never receive callers, never receive friends.  Never receive potential suitors.  He hadn't used violence then and he wouldn't use it now, she was sure of it.  For some reason, he thought physical force perfectly acceptable with his servants, but not with his niece.  She supposed she should be grateful for small mercies.  If nothing else, that knowledge gave her the courage to speak now.

"I was looking for some parchment for sketching."  It was the truth.  Or close to it.  She
had
run out of parchment, but she'd been looking for the steward to ask him to fetch more when she realized her ever present guard was asleep and her uncle away for the afternoon.  Ordinarily Widow Dawson never let Pippa out of her sight but she'd not turned up thanks to a chest cough that kept her abed.  The sudden taste of freedom, and the yearning to discover the reason for her imprisonment, led her to her uncle's study. 

"I found those instead."  She nodded at the papers in his hand. 

"You should never come in here.  Ever!"  He stepped closer, only an arm's length away.  "This is my private study and these are my private papers.  Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly."  He must think her too dull-witted to have understood what she'd read.  But then he had never taken much interest in her, before her father's death and especially after it.  How could he possibly have known that her father had ensured his only child received a good education?  And with nothing else to do during her imprisonment at The Grange, she'd devoured every book in her uncle's library, even the obscurest Greek poets.  Widow Dawson had asked her friends and relations for reading material, but books were difficult to come by in Shelton.  Simon's ignorance of his niece's education would prove to be his folly.  She had a head for numbers and accounts, something her father had put to good use as his health failed in the year before his death. 

"I understand that you have been stealing from me, Uncle."  She would not let him get away with it.  He might be her uncle and her guardian, but he was taking
her
money, her dowry.  She might need it one day.  She hadn't completely given up on being rescued by a knight in shining armor, although she had to admit knights, like books, were thin on the ground in Shelton. 

"Stealing?"  Simon snorted.  With his round face and broad nose, the sound made him resemble a pig.  "I'm merely taking what I am owed.  Keeping you in the manner to which you have become accustomed is a costly business."

"Nonsense!  It is clear from those figures that you are taking more than that.  Much more.  I demand an explanation.  No, I demand every last penny be returned to me.  With interest."  Ha!  Let him see what this stupid girl was capable of.

He stared at her.  Then he burst into laughter.  "Or you'll what?"

She flexed her fingers as an odd tingling sensation warmed them.  It seemed to be emanating from deep within where her rage surged like a tide.  She forced herself to remain calm.  Anger would not solve this situation.  It required clear thinking and calculated words.  "I will get out of here one day, Uncle.  And I can assure you, when I do, I will retrieve everything you owe me."

"With interest?"  His laughter ended with snorts.  "My girl, you know nothing of the world if you think you will ever get away from me.  You seem to forget, you have nowhere to go.  No family, no friends, not even the Widow Dawson would help you.  She's too afraid of me.  Everyone is too afraid of me in this county."  He smacked his palm again with the papers. 

"You are mistaken," she said with deliberate effort to keep her voice calm.  "I have friends.  You forget I had a full life before I came here.  There are people who would gladly help me."  But even as she said it, she could think of only one. 

Georgiana.  Sweet Georgiana Dale had never given up trying to contact her even though all Pippa's correspondence, in or out, had been confiscated.  Nearly two years ago, a sympathetic servant had risked a great deal to smuggle in a letter from Pippa's elderly friend.  But it was the only one.  There had been nothing since.

"If you manage to get out of The Grange," he went on as if she'd not spoken, "I can easily hunt you down and drag you back here.  You will never leave.  You and your land are mine."

The pool of rage surged again but this time she didn't check it.  Couldn't.  It was too fierce as it rushed through her body, along her arms and burst from her fingertips like bolts of lightening.  She wasn't sure how it happened but suddenly the papers in her uncle's hand caught alight. 

With a yelp, he dropped them onto the rushes and tried to stamp out the flames with his riding boots.  But the pages scattered and Molly the house maid hadn't changed the rushes in too long.  They were dry and the flames quickly spread across the floor. 

"Fire!" her uncle shouted.  "Fetch water!  Fire!"  He removed his cloak and swatted at the flames but it only served to fan them towards the curtains.  "You witch," he yelled at her.  "You did this.  I'll see you hung for witchcraft, you filthy bitch."  He returned to swatting the fire but fell back when the flames swallowed up the curtains. 

Pippa watched in a kind of trance but her uncle's accusation was as good as a slap to her face.  Oh God.  She
had
caused the fire.  She knew it as clearly as she could feel its heat on her face and smell the smoke. 

But how...? 

There was no time to consider the answer.  The fire was rapidly consuming the study.  Servants handed pails of water through the door but their efforts did nothing to dampen the flames.  Her uncle had given up trying to put it out and was frantically rummaging through one of his coffers, its edges already smoldering.  He shouted orders, barely heard above the roar of the fire, for valuables to be rescued.  Servants abandoned their buckets and ran to either do his bidding or save themselves. 

The thick smoke stung Pippa's eyes and filled her nose and mouth.  Her chest ached.  She couldn't breathe.  She had to get out. 

The door was wide open.  Some servants remained to help Simon with his papers and books but most had vanished.  No one seemed to take notice of her.

She ran.  Out of the study, down two flights of stairs, past scurrying, hysterical servants, to the front door.  She would leave through the main entrance this time, no backstairs with her guard on her heels. 

No one on her heels at all.

She fled to the stables where grooms led horses out and away from the rapidly spreading fire.  She could probably take one in the confusion but she wasn't dressed for riding and she'd not ridden in five years anyway.  No doubt one of the frightened creatures would throw her before she even left the estate.

She would have to flee on foot.  She changed direction and ran towards the gatehouse, hampered by her skirts.  She lifted them and kept running.  The steep pitched roof of the gatehouse loomed closer.  People from the village streamed past her, carrying buckets and blankets.  They jostled her but didn't seem to see her.  She was dressed plainly and most had never even met her—no doubt they thought her a frightened servant fleeing to safety.