Once a Princess by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online Page B

her, but Iris had needed her faculties intact to care for the baby. And the baby had been more important at the time, for he’d already decided to keep it. In a few years she’d be as good as any slave, and she’d cost him nothing.
    As he recalled how he’d come by Tanya, his expression turned wary and his tone became belligerent. “There’s not much to tell about that woman. She didn’t have a penny to her name, but she managed to talk Iris into taking her along with her, even though the going wouldn’t be easy traveling by wagon. But Iris always was softhearted.”
    â€œWith a direct river route between New Orleans and Natchez, why was your wife traveling by land and without escort?” Lazar asked.
    â€œShe didn’t have the fare for no riverboat either, not that it’s any of your business. But she’d gone down there with the wagon, my wagon. She’s damn lucky she didn’t sell it—” Dobbs fell silent with a scowl, aware that he was saying more than they needed to know, but having already blurted out so much, he confessed, “The wife thought to run off from me, but realized she had nowhere to go. She was coming back when I found her camped along the river road, trying to nurse the woman. But she was burned up with fever, and shouting all kinds of nonsense about assassins and kings, mostly in languages we’d never heard before, and mostly about failing her duty, whatever that was. She died in her sleep that night, and that’s all there is to tell.”
    â€œI think not, Mr. Dobbs,” said the clipped voice of the dark man with the devil’s eyes. “You forget to mention the child.”
    More than the others, who were all too serious-looking by half, this man unnerved Dobbs with his strange, piercing eyes. He seemed to be in the grip of some powerful emotion, tightly controlled, but frightening just the same. The same intense emotion was apparent in all of them, really, just more obvious in this one, but it made Dobbs wonder what was so important about the information they sought and why, after all these years, they were even seeking it.
    His expression still wary, but his tone more affable, he said, “I didn’t forget. It’s just a sad thing to remember, is all. There was a baby, yes, but it caught the fever from its mother. There just weren’t nothing me or Iris could do to save it, much as we tried.”

Chapter 6
    â€œDead!?”
    The incredulous exclamations came at Dobbs from two different directions at once. He didn’t know whether to elaborate on what he’d said or demand some answers of his own. But his hands had begun to sweat, his brow, too, not because he was lying, but because those devil’s eyes were trying to see right inside his head. He was sure of it.
    He cleared his throat, surreptitiously wiping his palms on his blanket. “What’s your interest in that baby? You’re all kind of young to be the father, ain’t you?” No answer came, which unnerved him even more.
    And then the blond one, whom he’d barely noticed because his handsomeness made him seem less dangerous than the others, flung a retort at him. “There was only one grave found, the woman’s. A mere pile of stones, guaranteed to crumble.”
    The contempt in that voice, making it sound as ifDobbs had been deliberately inept, got his dander up.
    â€œWhat was I supposed to do, dump her in the river?” Dobbs demanded. “When you don’t have no shovel, you make do in these parts.”
    â€œThere was still only the one grave, Mr. Dobbs,” observed the one with blue eyes.
    â€œThe baby didn’t die the same day. We’d already moved on.”
    The questions came at him from all of them then, and he had barely enough time to answer one before the next was shot at him.
    â€œHow many days later?”
    â€œA few.”
    â€œExactly?”
    â€œTwo,