Daughter of Mystery Read Online Free Page B

he hurried past her in the back corridor. “Who?”
    He rolled his eyes. “The nephew, who else?” If he’d been out of doors, he would have spat at the mention. Her position might be an anomaly in the servants’ hierarchy, but on this topic she was one with them in conspiracy.
    “When?” she continued hurriedly. “Is he up with—”
    “For the last quarter hour at least. And if you can dislodge him, it’s more than himself seems able to do.”
    Barbara took the stairs at a run and paused outside the half-cracked door more to catch her breath than to overhear.
    “You’ve no call to pinch pennies with me, Uncle. What are you saving them for now? If you want to be rid of me quickly, you know how.”
    Then the older man’s voice, sharp with scorn. “And what is the excuse this time? A new pair of horses? More gambling debts? Perhaps you’ve been more inventive this time—is your mistress with child?”
    Barbara took the pause as her cue to push the door open and enter. She feigned surprise. “Ah, forgive me for the interruption! You had asked to see me when I returned from riding.”
    The baron gave her a sharp look at this blatant lie. Estefen gave her a much sharper one and said, “We don’t need you here. I haven’t rushed to my uncle’s bedside to be interrupted by the likes of you.”
    Barbara ignored him and slipped into her silent waiting stance just inside the door. Estefen certainly didn’t look as if he had ridden in haste all the way from Rotenek. Those black locks meticulously dressed a la Titus might appear in careless disarray, but it was a barber’s hand and not nature that had tousled them. And the starched frill of his shirtfront had spent no time stuffed into a saddlebag. No, he had set out at leisure some days before. The concern was pure playacting.
    “My dear nephew,” the baron said in a milder tone than before. “Any requests you have to make of me can be made tonight over dinner. I have no taste for being harangued in my own bedchamber. And you show no taste in doing so.”
    Estefen sneered. “There was a day when everyone in Alpennia quaked at your displeasure, but that day is long past. You’re a tired old man, Uncle. You’ve lost the royal favor. And the only further use you can be to the family is in backing my career. You know it as well as I.”
    The baron closed his eyes with a sigh. “You don’t have a career—you have a drunken stagger. You have no concept of what it took to build what I hold and it will slip through your fingers like smoke. You are a stupid, greedy little boy and I want you out of my chamber! ”
    When his voice shifted into steely hardness, Barbara threw off her waiting pose and slipped sideways to herd Estefen toward the open doorway. When he balked, she slid her fingers around the grip of her sword. Not drawn—not even a fraction of an inch. Estefen hesitated. “You wouldn’t, Uncle.”
    “That was what your friend Iohenrik thought, didn’t he?”
    Barbara took a deliberate half step forward and Estefen chose to preserve his dignity by turning for the door. Once past the sill he turned and hissed at her, “Someday soon you’ll need a new patron. Don’t think I’ll have forgotten.” But he had no opportunity to see whether he’d hit the mark for the door was closed firmly in his face.
    Barbara closed her eyes briefly and willed herself to relax. She was a bow—drawn but not loosed—and it took a moment for her mind to unbend. At the baron’s word, she would have done what he might later regret. That was their balance: his the regret and hers the guilt. The law might forgive a death as falling within the scope of her employment, but this went beyond law. Estefen and his uncle were one step away from the edge of the cliff and the baron was not yet ready to let himself be pushed into the abyss. They all knew—without it ever said aloud—that the dead man in Rotenek had been Estefen’s proxy. Yet the fiction of family unity must be