The Lure of the Moonflower by Lauren Willig Read Free Book Online

woman and a young one. In the early days that hadn’t seemed to matter; she had built her league herself, by trial and error, half by accident. It was a game, and she was the one who determined the rules.
    But the game had turned darker somewhere along the way. It had gone from a game of wits to a struggle for survival, where there were no points for cleverness, only for results.
    The way to succeed was to show no vulnerability.
    I should like to lure you off your pedestal.
The voice echoed in her memory, flavored with a lilting French accent, a voice she knew far too well for comfort.
    She had ventured off her pedestal once, and found the ground uncommonly hard and rocky.
    She would take the high road, thank you very much.
    Jack Reid held her gaze. Whatever he saw there, the mockery was gone from his voice as he said abruptly, “Have you ever been to Portugal before, princess?”
    “I have not previously had that pleasure, no.”
    Jack Reid stepped back a pace, folded his arms across his chest. “And your command of the language . . . ?”
    Jane raised her chin a little higher. “I speak French, Italian, and German.”
    “But not Portuguese.”
    “I purchased a grammar.” Jane was aware of how ridiculous it sounded, how painfully inadequate.
    “A grammar.” Jack Reid adopted a lilting falsetto. “Excuse me, sir, can you tell me the way to the nearest Moorish ruin?”
    Even as a schoolgirl, she had never sounded quite that daft. “Did you speak Portuguese when you arrived here three years ago, Mr. Reid? You learned. You learned quickly.”
    Jack Reid shot her a quick, incredulous look. “Not that quickly. You don’t have time to engage in introductory grammar. You have, what? A week? Two at best? If you’re to find the Queen before someone else does, you’ll need to move fast.”
    You
, not
we
, Jane noticed.
    “Which is where you come in,” said Jane crisply. “You, Mr. Reid, are to be my mouth and ears. Our first order of operation is to discover whether there were any disruptions to the Queen’s domestic arrangements in the days before the fleet departed.”
    “You mean other than invasion by the French?”
    Jane ignored the sarcasm. “Yes. Once the word came that Junot was on the march, someone laid his plans. We need to go to the palace at Queluz to interview the Queen’s servants, discover who might have got close enough to move her.”
    It shouldn’t be difficult. The palace at Queluz was within easy reach of Lisbon; she’d checked on her map. She would have to rely on Jack Reid for the interviewing, since her Portuguese was still at the rudimentary stage—she had only had a week, after all—but she could observe their faces, their movements, the little tells that often told more than words.
    The Queen’s pavilion at Queluz, the palace where she had been immured since her madness became known, was the obvious place to begin.
    “No,” said Jack Reid.
    “No?” Jane wasn’t used to no.
    “You’re wasting your time at Queluz. Don John picked the palace bare. There’s not a tapestry or an armoire left in the building. He took everything but the stones—and that was only because he couldn’t find a way to pack them. You won’t find anything in Queluz.”
    He sounded very sure.
    “All right, then, Mr. Reid.” Jane hated asking for advice, but he was the expert here, not she. “What do we do?”
    “Cut your losses and go home.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    He spoke to her patiently, as to a small child. “I don’t know who you are, or what you’re really after, but I can tell you one thing: you don’t want to be here. This mission is a fool’s game.” As Jane opened her mouth to protest, he said, “You haven’t met Her Majesty. I have. The woman is delusional. She’s violent. And above all, she’s loud. Once you get your hands on her, you’ll have every French troop in Portugal down on you before the Queen can shout, ‘
Ai, Jesus!
’ Your mission is a fool’s