Covington, Cara - Love Under Two Lawmen [The Lost Collection] (Siren Menage Everlasting) Read Online Free

enough to kill her and that, he feared, might be a mistake that would come back to haunt him.
    Fortunately, it would be unlikely the incident would have been reported to the authorities. The woman was just a whore, after all. He’d not finished rifling through her bureau when she’d discovered him, but he’d managed, despite the debacle the evening had turned into, to find what he’d been looking for.
    He’d discovered where the whore’s daughter had gone.
    There’d been a copy of a newspaper advertisement for the B & O Railroad listing excursions departing Philadelphia for all points west. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out that paper, now slightly rumpled looking. On it, in flowery script, a notation at the side read, “Amanda Philadelphia to St. Louis to Springfield to Waco.”
    He had only one more city to reach.
    Colin could think of no reason for a whore—for surely the daughter took after the mother—to travel to Texas unless it was to retrieve the treasure his stepfather had hidden.
    The treasure that, by all rights, belonged to him .
    Colin’s mother had married William Gladstone when he’d been but five years old. The old man’s only son, nearly a decade older than Colin, had gotten himself killed in the war. At least his mother hadn’t produced any whelps in her new marriage to the man. Thus, Colin remained as Gladstone’s only legitimate heir.
    He’d never particularly liked the old man. He thought the bastard tedious in the extreme, always insisting that Colin attend school, then actually learn a trade and earn his way.
    Why should Colin work for a living like a common laborer? He’d had an inheritance from his own father, and Gladstone had been wealthy enough to provide whatever Colin needed.
    When the old man tightened the purse strings last year, Colin looked for another way to get what he was entitled to. One night, when he was into his cups, he recalled Gladstone’s journals.
    As a young lad, he used to spend time on winter afternoons reading through his stepfather’s accounts of his life before and during the war. William Gladstone was one of those sons of wealth and privilege who’d attended the military college at West Point. Then, when the War of Northern Aggression had broken out, he’d come home to Richmond, exchanging a blue uniform for a gray one. It seemed to Colin that when the man wasn’t soldiering, he was writing.
    Colin recalled one journal in particular, the final one written during those tumultuous years. As a boy of ten, he’d not understood all the finer details he’d read. But as he’d grown older, as he’d become an adult, he’d understood one adventure in particular Gladstone had chronicled.
    While he’d not read that account for several years—Gladstone had hidden the damn books once he realized Colin had been reading them—he remembered the story and knew what it meant.
    When money became tight, Colin decided that he would make his fortune the old-fashioned way. He would steal it. So he’d devised a plan, a rather ingenious plan, he’d thought. Gladstone had grown old and shown signs of ill health. It proved a simple matter to sneak into the man’s room one night and place a pillow over his face until he’d stopped struggling.
    Colin had worn mourner’s black very well. He’d stood next to the bastard’s casket, received the condolences. He’d sat in stoic silence during the reading of the will. No other family remained, save a maiden aunt nearing seventy. He’d received the bulk of Gladstone’s estate, of course, except for a small bequest and a personal memento left to a young woman named Amanda Dupree. Miss Dupree hadn’t been invited to the reading of the will, so Colin had thought nothing more of the matter until he’d discovered the final journal missing.
    The lawyer had been unwilling, at first, to divulge any information to Colin about the mysterious young woman. Finally, though, the man had admitted that Miss Dupree was