Lois Greiman by Seducing a Princess Read Free Book Online Page B

passionately that she was. “Disappointed?”
    She laughed. “Not a’tall,” she said. “I’m looking forward to seeing you dance.”
    He scowled, but she was already gone.
    “Want some beer?”
    His chest ached like hell and his head felt fuzzy, light and hot and disoriented. Spirits would steady him, but his stomach crunched at the thought. “Water,” he said. “Just water.”
    “You don’t drink no alcohol?”
    His stomach cramped. His muscles twitched with pain, keeping him silent for a moment.
    “I knowed a bloke once.” Her voice was soft and her expression dreamy, strangely out of place in this den of thieves. “He didn’t drink nothin’ but cider.”
    Will tried to relax, though his body felt tight, his mind fidgety and irritable. “A past lover, Gem?”
    “What?” She pulled herself from her reverie with a visible start. “Oh. No. ’E weren’t no lover. Just…” She paused and dropped her eyes. “You want some cider?”
    “Can’t give Vic’s killer cider,” said a voice from the doorway.
    Will glanced up, startled. A young man stood there. He was tall and lean, with a long angular face and eyes that sparked with mischief.
    “What you talkin’ about?” Gem asked.
    “Yes, Mr. Bald.” Poke entered the room, running a slow hand over the lad’s shoulder as he passed by. “What are you talking about?”
    “Him,” said the boy, and easing away from the doorjamb, strode jauntily across the scarred floor. “He killed Vic.”
    Holy hell. So he was an assassin! But who was Vic and why had he killed him?
    The room went silent. Princess appeared in the doorway again and stopped to watch. The women’s gazes met and parted.
    “Perhaps you should start at the beginning of this tale,” Poke said, and seated himself not far from the lone window. A bit of horsehair stuffing poked through a hole in the chair’s arm, but despite the state of the furniture, Poke looked as elegant as a princeling.
    “I went down to Fairberry Square,” Peter said, hisvoice rife with excitement. “Thought I’d see what was hatchin’. Sometimes there’s soldiers there.”
    “I thought I told you to stay away from the soliders, Peter,” Princess said.
    The lad grinned, letting his gaze stray to her. “You needn’t worry. They think they’re safe from rubbish like me. But you can distract ’em easy as kittens. There was a time—”
    “Perhaps you should stick to the story, lad,” Poke suggested.
    He nodded and pulled his gaze from Princess. “Like I says, I was down to Fairberry Square, talking to a maid or two when some lordy blokes come strollin’ up. They was dressed all proper. One of them had a bulge just there.” He pointed to his own ribs. “Now me, I thought, here’s a likely-looking piece of work, but before I could figure how best to relieve him of that unsightly bump I heard what they was sayin’.”
    He paused again and took a bite of the apple he held in one angular hand.
    “Are you going to share the conversation with us?”
    The lad grinned around his mouthful. “They said Lord Rambert was dead. Now that didn’t mean nothing to me, but then the other one asks how it happened.” He took another bite. Expectation shone in Poke’s eyes, but it was surely not so sharp as the burning impatience that seared Will. “And the second bloke said, he was knifed to death…in Darktowne…by the old mill.”
    “And that’s where you found our friend, Mr. Slate,” Poke surmised.
    Will’s guts coiled up tight. A knife. Good Christ! He’d killed someone with a knife.
    “Yeah, that’s where he was, right as rain. Lyin’ there inthe snow with a ten-inch blade lyin’ between him and another bloke. Only I didn’t know the dead bloke was Vic.”
    Will’s stomach twisted and his hands shook.
    “Lord Victor Rambert,” Poke crooned, and smiled eerily as he turned his gaze toward Will. “Would you like to expound on the situation, Mr. Slate?”
    Emotions erupted in the silent room, but for