Uncaged by Lucy Gordon Read Free Book Online Page B

enough to do anything she had to.
    “That’s enough,” she whispered to herself. “You’ve been behaving like a victim, and now it’s got to stop. It’s going to stop. That man is your lifeline, and you’re going to use him. He ruined your life, now he can put it right.”
    She sat up in bed. She was no longer talking out loud, but the words had mounted to a roar inside her head.
    He deprived me of my reputation and my son. Now he’s going to get them back for me and I don’t care what I have to do to make him.

Four
    M r. Newton’s check for two hundred pounds arrived the next morning. With it was a letter regretting that the amount could not be more, but the firm had only limited funds for such purposes, and while her compensation was still being negotiated...et cetera, et cetera.
    Megan stared at the check indignantly. She’d hoped for a reasonable amount to give her a little independence. “He’s not much help, is he?” Daniel asked, reading over her shoulder.
    “None at all,” she answered. “I dare say I can get some social assistance payments—”
    “And be stared at,” he reminded her. “Then the press will get to hear of it, and it’ll all start again.”
    “I’ll have to chance it. There’s nothing else I can do.”
    Daniel knew he was standing on the verge of a precipice. He must get her out of here quickly. Every moment she was here she was a danger to him. The words he ought to speak whirled in his brain. I’ll lend you some money—enough to get you somewhere to live—away from here. Say it now. Make it irrevocable while you still can.
    At last he spoke. “You’re welcome to stay here, but I suppose you’ll throw that offer back in my teeth.”
    Megan hesitated for one split second on the edge of the resolution she’d made in the darkness the night before. Then the die was cast. “I might not,” she said casually, and took an angry pleasure in seeing that he was taken aback yet reluctantly glad. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night.
    “Then you’ll stay?” he asked.
    She shrugged. “I may as well. I’ll need some clothes. Can you cash this check for me?”
    “No problem.”
    As she had nothing to wear to go shopping, Daniel went upstairs and returned with a few basic things, including a dress and a coat. “These used to belong to my wife,” he said briefly. “They’re all I have of hers. You’ll find them a little out of fashion, but serviceable.”
    “Don’t worry,” she told him, “I haven’t been keeping up with fashion.”
    Half of her mind noted that they were in the style that had been popular when she’d gone to prison, but she was too preoccupied to read any significance into this. Daniel’s wife had been sturdier in build than herself, and not as tall, but with the help of a needle and thread she managed to produce a passable result.
    Daniel drove her into town, well away from the area where he was known.
    Despite everything, Megan’s spirits rose at being out and about after three years of gray walls. She received a nasty shock when she saw the prices, and realized that two hundred pounds would stretch even less than she’d thought. She resolved the problem by diving into a shop that Daniel would have overlooked. “It’s only secondhand stuff in here,” he objected.
    “There can be treasures in secondhand shops if you know how to look,” she told him.
    She chose slacks and sweaters and a couple of dresses that could easily be altered. The only things she bought new were underwear and shoes. When she’d finished, she had thirty pounds left. “Enough for another pair of shoes,” Daniel suggested.
    “No, I have something else in mind. Will you wait for me here?”
    She slipped away and found a shop selling makeup and perfume. She didn’t want Daniel to know the details of what she bought there, but she was providing herself with vital weapons in her campaign to turn him into her instrument.
    At home she offered him his wife’s dress