Louisa Rawlings Read Online Free Page A

have your knife no more.”
    He laughed. “My knife. Ah, yes. I’d almost forgotten about my knife.” He shifted his hands so that he was now holding her wrists together in one hard fist. With his free hand he patted her apron pocket, the two side pockets of her skirt. “Not there? Alas.” Smirking wickedly, he put his palm against the front of her jacket. His insolent hand rubbed across her bosom once. A second time, and less gently. Then it stopped at the middle of her breasts, where the knife rested. “Well?” he asked, his dark eyebrows angling more sharply into the smooth expanse of his forehead. “Do you want me to fetch it out?”
    “I can’t do nothing without a free hand, damn your liver!”
    “Of course. But don’t try to run away.” He released one of her hands, but kept the other firmly in his grasp. As she fished out the knife and handed it to him, he bobbed his head in a mocking salute. “Thank you. For the knife you said you didn’t have.” He put the penknife into his own pocket, and caught at her free hand again.
    “Bastard!” she hissed.
    He smiled over her head at the other man. “You see, Martin? I told you she was a most convincing liar. It will be to our advantage, I think.”
    The man called Martin came around to stand beside the one he’d addressed as Lucien. Topaze frowned at him, studying his face. Soft and young, with warm brown eyes. Far more handsome than the gaunt-faced devil who grinned beside him. He seemed civilized. Reasonable. Possibly sympathetic. She softened her expression, composed her face into a mask of helpless grief. “Monsieur,” she whispered, “I appeal to you. What have I done? The man has his knife again. I didn’t mean to take it. I swear it. What further can you want of me?”
    Martin seemed torn, swayed by the tears Topaze had managed to squeeze out. “Really, Lucien…”
    Lucien snorted at Topaze, ignoring Martin. “ Brava! A beautiful performance, girl. But there’s not a shred of conscience in your dishonest, thieving soul, I’ll wager.”
    Her fear was becoming hot anger. She wriggled furiously in his hold. “What the devil do you want of me?”
    “Keep still.” Lucien pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, spit on a corner of it, and began to wipe the dirt from Topaze’s face. “By Lucifer, what a mess!”
    “Damn you!” She grimaced and squirmed, shaking her head from side to side.
    “Keep still, I say. And stop making faces.”
    For answer, she stuck out her tongue at him.
    He laughed in delight. “She’s saucy and fearless, Martin. You’ll grant me that, eh? I tell you, you should have seen the game she played in the square. Just a slip of a girl, but I’ve never seen a bolder one.”
    She scowled at him. “Do you mean to turn me in because of the purse? You whoreson, it’s long gone. They’d laugh you out into the streets if you tried to prove I took it!”
    He finished wiping her face and put away his handkerchief. “Look at her, Martin.” He studied her intently, his blue eyes scanning every curve and pore. She found it unnerving. She had never been examined in so personal, so intimate a fashion. She felt exposed. Naked. Yet his perusal was cold and dispassionate as well, as though he were looking over a horse he meant to buy. “I tell you, Martin,” he said at last, “it’s remarkable. Tell me how old you are, girl.”
    “Go to the devil.” She drew back her foot to kick him, but he jerked her sharply away.
    “Not today, you imp. I haven’t forgotten yesterday. If you kick me again, you’ll regret it.” Though he continued to smile, there was something in his eyes that froze her, rooted her to the spot. Her struggles subsided. “Now,” he said, “I asked how old you are.”
    She stared at him. She would give him nothing, damn his black heart.
    He seemed unconcerned by her silence. “I knew a man once who could tell the age of everything. An apple by its smell, a tree by the thickness of its trunk, and a