The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(10)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“He doesn’t even deserve that.”

She shrugged. “Maybe not. But I don’t care. I just want out.” The wine was warming her from the inside out and she had a happy little buzz going. “He sucks.”

Chris laughed. “Oh, my God, I love hearing that come out of your mouth. That’s totally worth the nine-ninety-nine this wine cost me. Why did you ever marry the putz in the first place?”

“I don’t know.” It was a question she had asked herself many times. Regan looked into her wine cup. No answers in the pink fizz. “I was twenty-eight, ready to settle down, have a family. He was charming, had a successful career, my family loved him… he treated me well when we were dating. It was just easy, I guess, and I thought I was in love with him.”

“I always knew he was an ass**le.” Chris studied her over his glass. “You know if you had stayed, eventually he would have gotten physical. Mental abuse almost always turns to physical.”

Regan shuddered, both fear and relief riding up her spine. “That’s part of the reason why I left—fear of how far it would go. Though I don’t know that he would have ever gone there. It really was more just that I couldn’t be what he wanted and I was so damn tired of trying to please him. I’ve wondered a lot why he ever married me … he really didn’t seem to like me the way I am.”

There was a pause while they both reflected, then Chris waved his hand in dismissal. “Well, you’re everything I want, and you’re an amazing friend. And thank God you did leave, because these chairs needed a home. Think of all the awesome parties we are going to throw in this house. Wait until Mardi Gras next year, we’ll blow the roof off this place.”

Glad he had lightened the mood again, Regan grinned. “I would kind of like to keep the roof. But a party would be fun.” Sinking back in her chair, legs stretched out, she sighed in contentment. “If I wind up old and alone in this massive house, will you take pity on me and move in with me?”

“Only if the football team is here too.”

“Deal.”

She raised her cup to his and they bumped them together, wine sloshing out and splashing their fingers. Regan laughed. “I’m loving life right this minute.”

It was the first time in a long, long while she could say that and mean it.

“I wish to go for a drive,” Camille told one of her footmen as she came down the stairs, gloves in hand. “Have the landau brought around immediately.”

There was a pause, the footman glancing toward the clock hanging over the rosewood table in the foyer. “Miss?”Camille’s temper flared. Everyone always telling her what to do, how to live. There was no one left on this earth who had the right to an opinion as to how she behaved, and she hoped the servants, the ladies in society, would all choke on their disapproval.

She glared at the footman from the bottom step. “Are you now feigning a hearing impediment? You heard me, you insolent laze-about. Yes, I am well aware of the hour, and you will do as you are told without opinion or hesitation.”

He was already stammering an apology and scrambling to do her bidding, which gave her great satisfaction. She had been stripped of all of her loved ones, but she had been left with the cloak of copious wealth, and she did appreciate the security it provided, the power within her own household. But because of her sex, having money also brought the burden of society’s rigid rules, and the fawning attention of men seeking to claim both her hand and her fortune.

The thought of marriage was abhorrent.

A husband would seize her assets, control her spending, and dictate how her time was spent.

Most of all, a husband would forbid her from seeing Felix, and she was not going to give up that peculiar pleasure—no, necessity—for anyone.

The voodoo practitioner had shown her how to awaken the delicious desires of her ripe body, and he was taking her through the labyrinth of magic, down the dark road that blurred the lines of this world and the next, where at the end she would have her family once again with her.

Strolling across the marble floor to head outside for her ride, Camille tossed her gloves on the Louis XIV chair that resided next to the front door. It was hot as Hades outside and she had suddenly realized there was absolutely no reason to follow convention when she was on a mission to rid herself of an unwanted suitor at nearly midnight. Why suffer through damp palms when there was no one to see her? Besides, she would soil the gloves when she threw dirt at the door.

Mr. Tradd wanted both her hand and her fortune, and she was no longer inclined to give him either, so she was going to conduct her very first spell—a ritual to rid herself of his bothersome presence in her life.

Her parents had wanted her to marry him, but he was two things she could no longer tolerate at this point in her life—he was both boring and bereft of money.

It was time to make the stuffy social climber disappear. The thought of doing so made her smile in satisfaction as she went out the front door and took the hand of her footman to step up into the landau. His eyes widened at the contact with her bare skin, and feeling more than a little wicked, Camille drew her fingers across the length of his palm before releasing him.

Desire replaced the shock in his eyes, and she gave him a saucy smile before turning to look out onto Royal Street. Perhaps after she had given her virginity to Felix, she would play with the footman. He was quite attractive, and displayed a rather impressive figure beneath his coat. There would be no disapproval from him for her behavior if she were on her knees before him, she could virtually guarantee. She laughed aloud, shifting on the seat against the sudden rush of arousal.

“Mr. Tradd’s residence,” she told her coachman, who had the good sense to neither protest nor hesitate.

Her suitor lived in a well-appointed house in the American district uptown, giving every appearance of having ample funds, but Camille knew it was a façade. He was using the last of his ready cash to let the house, and within months he would be solely reliant on his income as a banker to survive, hence his desperate desire to marry her. Camille found it amusing that a banker had no money, but not amusing enough to bind herself to him in marriage.

As far as she was concerned, he should have had the good sense not to lose all his money gambling.

When they pulled up to the crossroad of his street and the main thoroughfare, Camille ordered her coachman to stop. “I’m going for a quick stroll,” she said. “I shall return momentarily.”