The Water Nymph Read Online Free Page A

-kiss up toward a voluptuous blonde standing naked at the top and then made directly for the door.
    Sophie pressed herself into the crowd around the pearl woman until he had passed, then fled back into the night, relieved to see her target continuing straight down Fleet Street. The experiences in the tavern had left Sophie addled, and it required all her concentration to keep her mind on the man she was following. She forced herself to study his movements, watching for a sign that he would veer left here, or a flicker that he would look over his shoulder, until she discovered to her horror that she had unwittingly amassed a catalog of the comparative differences between him BW—Before the Woman—and after (including walk: jauntier; whistling: louder; loathsomeness: greater).
    She had just added, swaggering: increased, when he turned abruptly into a narrow passage and ducked through a door. Proceeding as silently as she could, she followed him through the door and found herself standing in a small paved court. Directly in front of her, there was another door, slightly ajar.
    Sophie swallowed hard and hoped her racing heart did not sound as loud outside her body as it did inside. She crept across the court and pushed the door open with one hand, keeping her other on the hilt of her rapier. She waited, listening intently. Nothing.
    When what felt like two years had passed in unbroken silence, she ducked under the low lintel and into a pastry kitchen. Remembering the food she had not eaten in days and the orange cakes she had been dreaming of, her stomach did an imitation of a sawmill. There was only one other door in the kitchen, and Sophie proceeded through it, stopping at intervals to listen and to give her stomach severe warnings about talking out of turn.
    After weaving through two more kitchens, three pantries, and a labyrinth of twisty hallways, Sophie finally arrived in an immense entrance hall. The wood paneling glowed in the moonlight that streamed through the tall windows of the facade, filling the hall with an ethereal radiance and making the broad staircase at its center appear to float. From somewhere deep in the house came the ticking of a clock, and in its somber regularity Sophie could have sworn she heard the words “Take heed. Go back. Take heed.”
    If she had not heard the voices above her at the same time, Sophie might have taken the clock’s very good advice. Instead, she ascended the staircase and alighted in front of an inlaid door. It was not entirely closed, and from within she could hear faint sounds of conversation.
    One of the voices she recognized instantly as belonging to her quarry. The other, a sort of angry rasp, was new to her, and its words created a cold knot in her stomach.
    “Get the girl,” it growled harshly. “I want the girl.”
    “I tried,” the familiar voice replied. “I did all I could.”
    She heard the other voice mimic comically, “I tried. I did all I could,” then snort and command again, “Get the girl.”
    The familiar voice sounded annoyed. “There is nothing we can do tonight. We will just have to wait.”
    It was the perfect time, Sophie decided. She would catch them off guard, take them by surprise. Drawing an enormous breath, she pushed open the door—
    And froze in her tracks.
    “Ah, Don Alfonso. We have been expecting you,” the familiar voice told her while the other cackled in delight.
    Horrified, Sophie looked from the smiling face of the man to the piercing gaze of his companion, and understood for the first time what she should have known hours earlier.
    She had been playing a game. Her opponent was cunning and ruthless. The stake was her life.
    And there was no end to her losing streak in sight.

Chapter Two
    “—an arrogant, blustering, contemptible, disgusting slug,” Sophie concluded triumphantly, leaning forward in her seat as if to hurl the last word across the desk at the man. “Or rather, slugs. You and your vulture.”
    “It is a