Book 07 - Deadly Quicksilver Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

spectacles. Maggie
Jenn took good care of her help. Spectacles are
expensive
. The old woman posed, hands clasped in front of
her. She neither moved nor spoke.
    Maggie Jenn said, “We’ll start whenever you’re
ready, Laurie.”
    The old woman inclined her head and left.
    Maggie said, “I will tell you some of it, though, to
soothe that famous curiosity of yours. So you do what I’m
paying you to do instead of rooting around in my past.”
    I grunted.
    Laurie and Zeke brought in a soup course. I began salivating.
I’d eaten my own cooking too long.
    That was the only way I missed Dean, though! You bet.
    “I was the king’s mistress, Garrett.”
    “I remember.” Finally. It was the scandal of its
day, a crown prince falling for a commoner so hard he set her up on
the Hill. His wife had not been thrilled. Old Teddy had made no
pretense of discretion. He’d been in love and didn’t
care if the whole world knew. A worrisome attitude in a man who
might be king.
    It suggested character flaws.
    For sure. King Teodoric IV turned out to be an arrogant,
narrow-minded, self-indulgent jerk who got himself snuffed within a
year.
    We aren’t tolerant of royal foibles. That is, our royals
and nobles aren’t tolerant. Nobody else would consider
assassination. It just isn’t done outside the family. Even
our mad dog revolutionaries never suggest offing the royals.
    I said, “I do wonder, though, about this
daughter.”
    “Not Teddy’s.”
    I slurped my soup. It was broth and garlic somebody tossed a
chicken across. I liked it. Empty bowls went away. An appetizer
course appeared. I didn’t say anything. Maggie might talk
just to extinguish the silence.
    “I’ve made my dumb mistakes, Garrett. My daughter
was the result of a lulu.”
    I chomped something made of chicken liver, bacon, and a giant
nutmeat. “This’s good.”
    “I was sixteen. My father married me off to a
virgin-obsessed animal who had daughters old enough to be my
mother. It was good for business. Since nobody ever told me how you
don’t get pregnant, I got. My husband had fits. I
wasn’t supposed to whelp brats, I was supposed to warm his
bed and tell him he was the greatest there ever was. He went buggo
when I had a daughter. Another daughter. He had no sons. It was all
a female plot. We were out to get him. I never had the nerve to
tell him what would happen if us women really gave him what he
deserved. He got a taste, though.” Nasty smile. For one
second, a darker Maggie shone through.
    She nibbled some food and left me room to comment. I nodded and
kept chomping.
    “The old bastard never stopped using me, whatever he
thought about me. His daughters took pity and showed me what I
needed to know. They hated him more than I did. I bided my time.
Then my father got killed by robbers who got twelve copper sceats
and a pair of junk boots more than a year old.”
    “That’s TunFaire.”
    She nodded. That
was
TunFaire.
    I nudged, “Your dad died.”
    “So I no longer had any reason to please my
husband.”
    “You walked.”
    “After I caught him sleeping and beat the living shit out
of him with a poker.”
    “I’ll take that to heart.”
    “Good idea.” There was mischief in her eye. I
decided I was going to like Maggie Jenn. Anybody who could live
through what she had and have a little mischief left . . . 
    It was an interesting meal. I got to hear all about how she met
Teddy without hearing word one about what she did between her
shoeleather divorce and that first explosive encounter with the
future king. I suspected she had loved Teddy as much as he’d
loved her. You wouldn’t keep something as ugly as those red
rooms in memory of somebody you disliked.
    “This place is a prison,” she told me, a little
misty.
    “You got out to visit me.” Maybe they let her out on
a tease release program.
    “Not that kind of prison.”
    I stuffed my face and let that old vacuum suck more words out of
her. I don’t deal well with metaphor.
    “I