'Til the End of Time Read Online Free Page A

of fear through her. She felt as if she’d turned her back on an enraged puma. “War is no game, Miss Ballard.”
    “Isn’t it? Perhaps not to the victims, who act as pawns in your political quarrels. I’m afraid your romantic, folk-hero image doesn’t impress me any more than Naldona’s ‘man of the people.’ In your own way you’re just as ruthless as he is.”
    “I know.” The words were softly menacing. “However, I didn’t realize you were aware of that aspect of my character.”
    Perhaps it had been a mistake to antagonize him by pointing out that she knew how ruthless he could be. She was usually more diplomatic, but her physical response to him had caught her off guard, and she had reacted with instinctive defensiveness. But it was too late now to worry about regrets. She squared her shoulders as she reached for the knob of the door. “I’m fully aware of it. You even put Fontaine in danger to deliver your message tonight. If you’d been wrong in your gauging of my reaction, he very well could have beenkilled. You knew that and did it anyway.” She glanced over her shoulder and met his eyes challengingly. “What would you have done if you’d seen me take your message across the room to Naldona?”
    He returned her gaze unflinchingly. “I would have shot you,” he said simply. “I had my pistol trained on you from the minute Fontaine approached you. You would have been dead before you opened your lips.”
    “You would have murdered me?” she whispered. “Shot me down in cold blood?”
    “I wouldn’t have wanted to do it. It would have come down to a question of choices.” His voice was suddenly weary. “If you had spoken to Naldona, Fontaine would have died and Naldona still would have found a way to asassinate you. If you’d died without revealing his complicity, there would have been only one death. I’ve had to make a number of unpleasant choices in the last two years. This would have been just one more.”
    And these decisions had left their mark on him. He looked both disillusioned and soul-sick. For a fleeting instant she felt a surge of sympathy, before she recognized the emotion and quickly crushed it. Good Lord, the man had said he would have shot her and she was feeling sorry for him. “You wouldn’t have to make choices like that if you weren’t set on becoming the great revolutionary hero.”
    “You’re wrong. I have to make these choices now because I made the wrong choice two years ago. It’s my hair shirt.” His lips twisted. “And I have an idea you’re going to be a hair shirt, too, Miss Ballard.”
    He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and crossed the terrace, fading once more into the shadows.
    Alessandra drew a long, quivering breath and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them, smiled determinedly, and opened the French door. Fontaine was standing at discreet attention beside it. She nodded politely, and her smile took on added brilliance as she quietly slipped back into the ballroom.

Two
    Lord, it was difficult to sit here and wait. Alessandra leaned back in the Queen Anne chair and tried to relax her tense muscles. She couldn’t have been sitting here in the darkness as long as it seemed, or she would have turned into a doddering old lady. Her lips curved in an involuntary smile as she imagined the reaction of her would-be attacker if he crept into her bedroom and found himself confronting the stereotypical spunky old lady.
    Then the smile faded as she glanced critically at the bed across the room. Perhaps she should rumple the covers a little more. The dummy she had made with pillows looked realistic enough in the dimness, but a little disarray might—
    The door was opening!
    The turning of the knob was so quiet, she wouldn’t have been able to detect it if her senses hadn’t been finely tuned by the adrenalineflowing through her. The muscles in her stomach tautened painfully with fear and anticipation as she silently rose to her feet. It