The Opening Night Murder by Anne Rutherford Read Free Book Online Page B

and pulled the hood over her head as far as it would go to hide the kerchief. Quietly she made her way down the stairs and out to the street. She didn’t know what she would say if she were apprehended, but luck was with her to the extent that nobody saw her and she strode purposefully to the corner as if on an important errand. And in a way she was.
    It was a fair walk across the bridge to Bank Side, and full dark when she arrived at the stairs. Only the full moon and a torch near the bank’s edge lit the area. Daniel was waiting for her, sitting on the top step of the stairs to the river. When he saw her, he leapt to his feet and hurried to her. “Suzanne!”
    She burst into tears and let him fold her into his arms.
    “What happened?” One finger touched her swollen upper lip.
    She pressed her face against his cloak, and it muffled her voice. “Father accepted a proposal from a man named Farthingworth. I told them about the baby.”
    Daniel grunted. “So you’ve packed up and left, I see.”
    She looked up into his shadowy face. “I had no choice. Hemight kill me next time; this time I believe he tried.” One arm wouldn’t take the weight of her bag, and the other was also in terrible pain.
    “You know I can’t take you in.”
    She nodded. Daniel was married, and had been for a year, to a girl not quite sixteen. She was the daughter of a duke, so Suzanne knew it was not a love match. He loved Suzanne; it was so certain she never thought to question it. He was wealthy, and so would establish her and her child in a house somewhere. She would be his mistress, and she could live the rest of her life knowing she was the one he really cared for. Far better than to be the wife of someone who didn’t love her.
    “In fact,” he continued, “I won’t even be in London much longer.”
    That was unexpected. She stepped back, and he had to catch her arm to keep her from accidentally stepping over the edge of the cobbles into the river. A cry of pain escaped her as the jolt shot up to her shoulder. Now in his eyes she saw he meant to tell her good-bye. She sank to her knees next to her bag, gasping and searching for something to say. Finally she choked out, “Why?”
    He knelt beside her. “The king needs me. He’s already off to York, and I need to catch up with them immediately. I only came tonight to tell you farewell.”
    She sat on her heels. Her head swam with the revelation and the realization of what she’d just done to herself. And even then she deluded herself about the enormity of it, for it was too horrible to grasp.
    Had she known fully what the following years would bring for herself and her child, she might have fainted. Or thrown herself into the river. Even at that moment she didn’t realizethat tonight was the last she would see of Daniel for eighteen years. In that time there were only three letters from him while he fought with the King’s Cavaliers, then fled with young Charles II. He never saw Piers, and had no contact with either of them while on the Continent. From that moment forward, Suzanne was entirely on her own in the world.

Chapter Five

    “H ow have you been, Suzanne? Are you well?” Daniel’s voice held the too-casual tone of someone who had just met her on the street after an absence of only days.
    “I’m a whore, Daniel, but you always knew that.” As much as she struggled to keep the bitterness from her voice, there was no hiding it entirely.
    Hearing it, his reply was nearly as tart. “Well, then I expect you’ve had a far greater income than I’ve had these past few years. Loyalty to the crown is well and good, but it does tie one to the fortunes of another, for good or for bad, and I can hardly say the past eighteen years have been particularly good.”
    Without pause except for breath, he changed the subject with a wide, friendly grin and his finest charm. “Shall we retire to a public room for some refreshment? Is the Goat and Boar still in business or has London