Brazen Virtue by Nora Roberts Page B

killing?
    Laughing a little, he shifted on his sweat-damp sheet. How could he know, when it had been a first for both? Perhaps it had been that fascinating combination of the two. In any case, he’d have to find out.
    For one cold, brief moment, he considered going downstairs and murdering one of the servants in her sleep.When the idea didn’t stir his blood, he discounted it just as coldly, just as quietly. He needed to wait a few days, to think it through logically. In any case, it wouldn’t excite him to kill someone who meant as little to him as a servant.
    But Desiree.
    Turning again, he began to weep. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d wanted to love her, to show her how much he had to give. But she’d kept screaming, and her screams had driven him mad, driven him to a passion he’d been unaware existed. It had been beautiful. He wondered if she’d felt that wild, rising flood just before she’d died. He hoped so. He’d wanted to give her the best.
    Now she was gone. Though she’d died by his hands, and he’d unexpectedly derived pleasure from it, he could mourn for her. He’d no longer hear her voice, arousing, teasing, promising.
    He had to find another. Even the thought of it had his muscles trembling. Another voice that spoke only to him. Surely such glory wasn’t meant for only once in a lifetime. He would find Desiree again, no matter what she called herself.
    Rolling over, he watched the first pale light of dawn seep through his window. He’d find her.

Chapter 5
    G RACE AWOKE AT FIRST light. There was no buffer of disorientation, no momentary lull of confusion. Her sister was dead, and that one bleak fact hammered in her head as she pushed herself up and struggled to cope with it.
    Kathleen was gone, and she couldn’t change it. Anymore than she’d ever been able to change the flaws in their relationship. It was harder to face that now, in the daylight, when the first burst of grief had dulled to a dry kind of ache.
    They’d been sisters, but never friends. The truth was she hadn’t even known Kathleen, not in the way Grace could claim to know at least a dozen other people. She’d never been privy to her sister’s dreams and hopes, failures and despair. They had never shared giddy secrets or tiny miseries. And she’d never pushed, not really, not hard enough to crack the barrier.
    Now she’d never know. Grace rested her face in her hands for a moment, just to gather strength. She’d never have the opportunity to find out if the gap could be bridged. There was only one thing for her to do now: tohandle the details that death callously left scattered for the living to sweep up.
    She pushed aside the blanket Ed had spread over her sometime during the night. She’d have to thank him. He’d certainly gone above and beyond the call of duty to stay with her until she’d been able to sleep. Now she needed a gallon of coffee so that she could pick up the phone and make the necessary calls.
    She didn’t want to stop in front of her sister’s office. She wanted to walk straight by without a glance. But she stopped, felt compelled to stop. The door would be locked, she knew. The police seal was already stretched across it, but her writer’s imagination made it too easy for her to see beyond the wood. She could remember now what even through shock her mind had absorbed. The overturned table, the shower of papers, the broken paperweight, and the phone, the phone upended on the floor.
    And her sister. Bruised, bloody, half-naked. In the end, she hadn’t even been allowed her dignity.
    Kathleen was a case now, a file, a headline for the curious to scan over coffee and during car pools. It didn’t help to realize that if Kathleen had been a stranger, Grace would have read the headline while downing coffee too. Her feet propped on the table, she would have absorbed each tiny detail. Then she’d have clipped the story and filed it for possible reference.
    Murder had always fascinated her. After