Jail Bait by Marilyn Todd Read Free Book Online

it shook him to the core, did that. Set him rethinking all his values, because next thing he’s whisking me off for a month of solid pampering and I tell you straight, I’m relishing every single second.’
    So how come, thought Claudia, plugging the stopper back in the neck of the wineskin, the son could afford to send his old gossip of a mother here…?
    ‘Sadly I’m stuck with my daughter-in-law and her frightful sister—’ Lavinia began, then pulled up short, as though catching sight of something over Claudia’s shoulder. However, before Claudia could turn to face the sliding doors, Lavinia broke into a cough.
    ‘My…medicine,’ she croaked. ‘In my room. Would you mind?’
    Claudia could hardly refuse a sick woman’s request, yet she had the strangest feeling Lavinia had contrived to get her out of the way. That cough was pretty unconvincing. But why? Why should an impecunious, weather-beaten olive grower want her out of the way?
    So busy was she conjuring up a list of possibilities that Claudia was completely unprepared for the sight which greeted her when she flung wide Lavinia’s door. On the couch, their limbs naked and entwined, a dark-haired girl and a negro were worshipping Eros with uninhibited abandon.
    ‘Who the blazes are you?’ the man demanded, hauling up the sheet as they sprang apart.
    ‘The medicine,’ Claudia barked. ‘Where’s Lavinia’s medicine?’
    ‘Merciful Jehovah, is she all right?’ It was the girl who sprang off the bed and grabbed a small phial from the table.
    ‘How the hell do I know?’ Claudia snapped, whipping the draught from her hand and racing back to the sun porch where, surprise, surprise, Lavinia had stopped coughing.
    Shall I fetch Kamar?’ she asked sweetly.
    ‘That useless fool!’ the old woman retorted. ‘Couldn’t tell a fracture from a freckle. No, no,’ she waved away the phial, ‘I’m all right.’
    And Claudia thought, I bet you are.
    ‘Ah, Ruth! Lalo!’ Lavinia addressed the amorous couple. The negro, his skin still glistening from his aerobic endeavours, had pulled on a tunic of such rough quality it would have curled Pylades’ lip, while the girl was wearing a fringed skirt below a tight high bodice which revealed her ancestry as much as her midriff. ‘You three have met, then?’ Lavinia asked, her blue eyes shining with mischief.
    The Judaean girl ignored her mistress to put her hand on Lavinia’s forehead, then studied the whites of her eyes. ‘You’ve been drinking again,’ she said. ‘You know what happens when you mix your drugs with the wine.’
    ‘Never touched a drop,’ Lavinia said, pulling the coverlet over the wineskin, then turned to Lalo and said, ‘For heaven’s sake, stop fussing.’
    ‘I’m not fussing,’ the field hand said, scooping her into his arms, and Claudia noticed that his knuckles were bleeding and raw, as though he’d been in a fight. ‘Merely taking precautions, and it’s bed for you, my lady.’
    Leaving Ruth to wheel out her day couch, Lavinia clasped her wizened hands round the outworker’s neck and shot Claudia a vulgar wink before the trio disappeared.
    Claudia rested her elbows on the gold-painted rail and gazed out over the water as she wondered again what the old woman was concealing. Had someone appeared in the doorway? Overheard the discussion about Cal? Or was Claudia’s overworked imagination running away with itself? Other islands were popping up now, smaller, rockier outcrops close to the north shore of the lake. The flame on Tuder’s island, she noticed, had been extinguished. A heron stalked the shallows for tadpoles and eels, and an osprey scooped a fish in its talons.
    About twenty strokes out, a lone rowboat cleaved a path through the opalescent water, leaving ripples which reflected the misty mauve of the dawn. Claudia frowned. That boat. Where had she seen it before? As though her head was befuddled by a heavy cold, she couldn’t seem to think straight.
    Then it came to