Jayne Fresina by Once a Rogue Read Free Book Online

tireless, the sensations too intense to let go, time too precious to waste in sleep.
    He fell back on his elbows, blinking, waiting for his head to clear. The three sovereigns she’d promised were on the table beside the bed.
    This arrangement is just for tonight, you understand.
    As he swung his feet to the floorboards, still scratching his rumpled head, he stepped on something hard. A pearl earring. It must have dropped from her ear last night, or else, leaving in such a hurry, she accidentally left it behind.
    The sun was a tired weakling, barely having the strength to pass through those dingy clouds and there was a damp bite of cold in the air, lingering from last night’s rain. Encountering such a dreary day, most folk would curl back to bed and steal an extra half hour’s nap, but not him. He’d never lain abed a day in his life and on this particular morning he had a very important cause to be up.
    He had a woman to find.
    Take all of me, leave nothing for him.
    He didn’t like the sound of it, not a bit. She wasn’t going to any other man, not now. She belonged to him, damn her. He couldn’t bed a virgin and then arbitrarily let her go with no further concern. He was a reformed man now, no longer a rogue whose first interest was his pleasure and second interest escape from consequences.
    Throwing on his clothes, he relived their conversation in his mind, searching for clues. She seemed to think he would have no more curiosity, would make do with one night and never think of her again. Last night he’d even let himself believe he might do that.
    Wrong.
    Stumbling down the narrow staircase, he was immediately cloaked in thick, woolly wood-smoke and the stink of stale sweat. A handful of fellows still sprawled across the lower room in varied states of drunkenness, while Mistress Comfort genially pushed at their groaning forms with her broom.
    “Wake up yer lazy buggers,” she chirped. “Rise and shine! Off out of ’ere with the lot o’ yer.” Having taken their coin, she wanted nothing more to do with her patrons until they had full pockets again. Catching sight of the man lurching down the stairs, she shouted that she hoped he had a good night and would return again soon.
    He groggily negotiated the last step. “Where is she this morning? Where did she go?”
    “How would I know?” She resumed sweeping.
    “She’s one of your girls.”
    “I wish it was so. Could raise my rates then.”
    He tried to get his breath back. A great, heaving hollow opened up in his gut, as panic, a rare sensation in his life, reared its head.
    “First time a lady ever paid for the use o’ one o’ my guests,” she exclaimed, clearly amused. “Perhaps I might start a new trade, eh? Lonely widows and bored wives looking for forbidden fruit.” She eyed him speculatively. “I suppose she wanted some very strange things, eh? The hoity-toity types often do.”
    He swore. “You’re telling me you know nothing about her? She didn’t just appear in a puff of smoke.”
    “Might as well have. Yer won’t find her again. She ain’t from around here, ’tis for certes. A lady like her won’t have naught to do with the likes o’ yer sort. Not in daylight anyhow. She took what she wanted from yer, lad.”
    As she shuffled away down the alley, he followed close on her heels. “When did she leave?”
    “First light. Told me to let yer sleep on as long as yer wished and tipped me a few more coins to let yer rest.” The old lady cackled. “Wore yer out did she?”
    Frustrated, he exclaimed, “Did Captain Downing come here last night? He must know who she is.”
    Mistress Comfort spat over her shoulder. “A fine lady like that would have naught to do with Nate Downing, my lad. No, whoever she is, yer won’t find her again.”
    John stared at the wall, the anger mounting from a small, smoldering bonfire to a raging inferno.
    Whoever she was, she’d used him and cast him aside like a dry, stale crust.
    “Best forgotten,