The Lure of the Moonflower Read Online Free Page A

touching her in the slightest.
    Her features had the classical elegance that was all the rage. High cheekbones. Porcelain pale skin, tinted delicately pink at the cheeks. Jack had been around enough to know that it wouldn’t take long for the ravages of her trade to begin to show. Those clear eyes would become shadowed; that pale skin would be replaced with white lead and other cosmetics in a desperate simulacrum of youth, a frantic attempt to catch and hold the affections of first one man and then another, until there was nothing left but the bottle—or the river.
    Better, thought Jack grimly, to be a washerwoman or a fishwife, a tavern keeper or a maid. Those occupations might be hell on the hands, but the other was hell on the heart.
    Not that it was any of his lookout.
    The courtesan’s eyes met Jack’s across the crowd. Met and held. Ridiculous, of course. There was a square full of people between them, and he was just another rough rustic in a shapeless brown jacket.
    But he could have sworn, for that moment, she was looking fully at him. Looking and sizing him up.
    For what? He was hardly a likely protector for a French courtesan.
    Go away, princess
, Jack thought.
There’s nothing here for you.
    The French might hold Portugal, but not for long. Rumors were spinning through the crowd. The British navy was sending ships. . . . There were British spies throughout Lisbon. . . . The royal family were returning to raise their army. . . . There were troops massing on the Northern frontier. . . . Rumor upon rumor, but who knew what might have a breath of truth?
    It would all go into Jack’s report. Provided he ever found his bloody contact, who appeared to be late. The review was almost over, and still, no one had approached him.
    That did not bode well.
    The soldiers began to filter out of the square, marching beneath the baroque splendor of the Arco da Bandeira, the cheerful yellow of the facade in stark contrast to the bleak weather and even bleaker mood of the populace.
    “Pig!” a woman hissed, and tossed a stone.
    “Portugal forever!” rose another voice from the crowd.
    The officers milled uneasily, looking to their leader. Junot turned, speaking urgently to the man at his side, one of the members of the Portuguese Regency Council, the nominal government that had replaced the Queen and Regent.
    A bottle shattered against the tiles, among the feet of the departing soldiers, spraying glass.
    “Death to the French!” shouted one bold soul, and then another took it up, and another.
    Projectiles were hailing down from every direction, stones and bottles and whole cobbles pried from the street. Abuse rattled down with the stones. The French troops ducked and milled, looking anxiously to their leader, who appeared to be in the middle of a fight with the regency council, none of whom could agree with one another, much less anyone else.
    And then, the sound that could turn a riot into a massacre: the crack of an old-fashioned musket, shot right into the ranks of French soldiers.
    It was, Jack judged, not a healthy time to stay in the square.
    Any moment now, the French were going to start firing back, and Jack didn’t want to be in the middle of it. If his contact hadn’t appeared by now, he wasn’t coming. One thing Jack had learned after years in the game: saving one’s own skin came first.
    He slipped off through the heaving, shouting crowd. The various approaches to the square were already crammed with people: people surging forward, people fleeing, people fainting, people shouting, mothers grabbing their children out of the way, fishwives scrabbling at the cobbles, old men running for ancient weapons, French émigrés and sympathizers running for their lives as the crowd hurled abuse and missiles at the collaborators. Rioters were fighting hand-to-hand with French soldiers; Junot’s face was red with anger as he shouted, trying to be heard above the square. A runner was making for the French