My Fair Temptress by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online

running, slipping on the stones beneath his feet, running right to the edge of the square. Then he stopped abruptly. He would do Michael no good if he rushed in to be killed. He peered around the building into the empty square.
    A fire had been set right beside the fountain. A big fire. A fire fueled by sturdy chunks of tree and, if the smell was to be trusted, fed more than a few bottles of brandy. The occasional flame still licked at the twisted branches, but most of the wood had burned down to coals. And laid out like a lesson on the hearth of embers…
    Caution forgotten, Jude walked slowly toward the center of the square.
    A body smoked, blackened and crisp.
    Jude stared down at it. Flinched, horrified…disgusted.
    No. No. Not Michael.
    But in the light of the dying flames, gold glinted in the cavern of the ribs. Jude didn’t have a moment of doubt. He knew what it was.
    With a stick, he speared the family’s signet ring, the one Michael had donned on his eighteenth birthday, the one the Durant heir always wore. Jude dropped it into his palm. The gold, so shiny, so bright…so hot it sank through Jude’s skin and into his flesh. He didn’t care. He welcomed the pain, the searing heat. It was real. He deserved it, and it gave him a moment’s relief from the taste of his own guilt.
    This was his brother, and he was dead.
    Michael was dead. Michael was dead, and Jude had failed him.
    Not just failed him. Refused to aid him. Agony clutched at Jude. He bent, holding his belly in silent agony.
    When out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a dark shape creeping toward him. Whirling, Jude pulled his dagger.
    A boy stopped, stood there, hands up.
    For all that the lad was skinny and a child of perhaps eight, Jude recognized the menace of his motions. A pickpocket and a sneak thief. Jude slipped the ring into his pocket, kept the blade pointed steadily at the lad. “Tell me what happened now.”
    “Can’t you see? They killed him, Mister,” the lad said. “They claimed he interfered. They said if we knew what was smart, we’d all stay down here where we belong and not make trouble, or we’d end up just like him.”
    “Who did this?” Jude contained his anguish in a whisper.
    The lad backed up a step as if he expected Jude to explode. “Men from up there.” He indicated the mansion near the top of the mountain where gamblers came to take their chances, where aristocrats danced, and the de Guignard family tossed their gossamer net and pulled up gold with every cast. “They killed this chap, burned the body. They threw gold pieces on the floor of my father’s tavern. They took a cask of ale and my sister and rode down the road toward the border of Serephinia.”
    Jude heard a different anguish in the lad’s voice, the torment of a boy who had lost his sibling. Slipping his dagger into its shield, he said, “Get me a horse.”
    “Why should I do anything for you? You’re a foreigner. You’re a gentleman.” The boy spat at Jude’s feet and cast his worst insult. “You’re like them.”
    Jude didn’t waste his time denying or explaining. Picking up the lad by his ragged jacket, Jude tightened his fist and shook him. “Get me a horse.”
    The lad hung there.
    “And I’ll get you your sister back.” Jude dropped him back to his feet.
    “How’re you going to do that? There’re four of them.”
    Jude pointed to the blackened body. Sorrow clawed at him, seeking escape. “That was my brother. He taught me to fight by landing me in all sorts of desperate situations. He taught me to be cautious the same way.” Grief and guilt won its way over his control. “And now—he has taught me how to go mad.” He dropped to his knees. Lifting his face toward the black sky, he howled his fury and his anguish. Like a wolf. Like a beast. Like a man who had nothing to live for except vengeance.
    When he finished, the boy was back with a horse. “Bring back the gelding.” He dropped the reins into Jude’s hands.