The Crimson Lady by Mary Reed McCall Read Free Book Online

herself useful to Will and the boys in their roadside snares to steal from wealthy and corrupt noblemen.
    “I am the Crimson Lady, sir,” Fiona said at last, “and I must seek out Will because I am only now returning to Alton after three years’ absence.”
    Many of her old instincts were returning she noticed, now that she’d overcome that first, most difficult hurdle; almost without thought, she called up a supremely innocent expression and leaned just a bit toward the man, murmuring in a husky plea, as if for his ears alone, “Surely you can understand my need for help in finding him after all this time. Won’t you aid me? Please…?” she breathed as an afterthought, staring directly into his startled brown eyes.
    Her actions had the very effect she’d hoped; her accuser flushed an even deeper shade than before and looked away, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He backed away a step, crushing his cap in his hands and doing everything he could not to meet her gaze again, and shecouldn’t help thinking that he looked like a drowning man afraid of going under one last time.
    “Aye, I might be able to—I mean, I can help, I think,” he stuttered, backing off another step. “That is, we—we might be able to lead you to Will again. We could take you to the place where—”
    “But you still have no proof, man,” a drunken and more malevolent voice called from a table to the left of Fiona. She turned and saw its owner, a burly mountain of a man with a thick beard and leonine hair, lurch to his feet, flanked swiftly by two of his friends as all three crossed the short distance to where she and Braedan stood.
    A tingle of warning slid up her spine. This man looked dangerous. She’d never seen him before, of that she was certain; she’d have remembered someone of his size and appearance—and she didn’t like the look of him now, especially not the way his lips curved on his face. It was the sort of leering expression she hadn’t seen since Draven had made a sport of parading her before his friends at one of his frequent feasts, like a sweetmeat to be tasted.
    “I be a traveler from London,” he said thickly as he looked her over, “not from this shire, and yet I’ve heard my share about the famed Crimson Lady.” He glanced around the inn now, spreading his arms and showing off a line of thick, strong teeth, as he confessed, “I’d always planned to sample Giselle de Coeur’s charms myself, knowin’ as I do the lord who’d eased her on the path to…disrepute, shall we say. But I never got around to makin’ the arrangements before she disappeared. And while she were in London, Lord Draven, the bastard, kept her to himself most of the time.”
    “Draven…?”
    The raspy growl of the name came from Braedan, and now Fiona did twist around to look at him, frowning at the black expression clouding his feverish eyes.
    “Did you say Draven?” he demanded of the burly intruder.
    “Aye, what of it?” the man slurred in response, clenching his fists and scowling threateningly at Braedan. “I may not be a high-and-mighty, but I know his lordship as well as any. I be a smithy by trade, and he places some curious orders with me, he does, for shackles and the like. I always fill ’em, just as he asks, and he rewards me with a chance at the women he knows. His name be Kendrick de Lacy, Viscount Draven, though in the stewes he’s better known by the name he fashioned for himself—the Whoremaster of London,” the smithy crowed, “which is just what he is, by spittle and piss!”
    “Christ, it can’t be,” Braedan muttered, grimacing and rubbing his head, trying to make it stop spinning. He swayed a little before he managed to say, “Lady, I have to tell you something. It doesn’t seem possible, but—”
    “Back away, man—I weren’t finished with ’er yet,” the wild-haired giant suddenly groused, stepping between Braedan and Fiona, and directing his avid gaze back on her.
    Reaching out to steady