Jail Bait Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoes—which, apart from a skimpy breast-band and thong, was all the clothing she wore.
    Someone had ripped out her tongue, she was mute. Slipping off a bangle, the gold one set with pearls, Claudia’s trembling hand offered it to him in gratitude.
    Dark eyes, the darkest she had ever seen, bored into hers. ‘Thank you,’ growled a voice with a thick, Spanish accent, ‘but I doubt it would suit me.’ There was a pause. ‘Look away,’ he said, and it was not so much a suggestion as a command.
    Claudia looked away, and when he gave the all-clear, he was cleaning the point of his spear on wild elecampane. She closed her eyes until the waves of nausea had passed.
    Suddenly he clamped a hand round Claudia’s wrist and in one liquid movement, she was swept upright and on to her feet. For what seemed an eternity, his hand remained clamped and black eyes burrowed into the depths of her mind, reading every last secret, unravelling her past and travelling the route of her fears. The smell of woodshavings and pine drifted between them, then he released her and the moment was gone.
    The hunter moved back to the bear. Its fur was dull and unkempt, the weals from a score of savage whippings standing stark and livid, explaining why it ferociously sought revenge on all humankind.
    But Claudia fixed on the man. The tunic he wore was no coarse workman’s cloth, it was the product of very fine tailoring, cut high above the knee and fastening on the left shoulder only, leaving the right unobstructed for hunting. Gold embroidery rippled round the hem, and it had not escaped her notice that his hands were not calloused and the nails had been manicured on a regular basis. He crouched down, one knee bent, the other touching the ground, and dribbled the chain through his hand. When the links jangled, a shiver ran through Claudia’s body. Then, before she realized what was happening, he had collected his spear, sheathed his knife and was loping back to the woodlands.
    ‘Wait,’ she called out. ‘I haven’t thanked you for saving my life.’
    Under the umbrella of a gnarled oak tree, the hunter stopped and moved his head half a turn. ‘No,’ he said, and again his mane veiled his face. ‘But you will.’
    And with that he was gone. Swallowed up by the forest as though he had never existed.

V
    Atlantis was coming back to life as Claudia slung the painter over the mooring post. The fisherman who’d been mending his net was long gone and along the shoreline wildfowl wove in and out of the reed-beds. High above the thicket where Cal would be waiting with his basket of lobsters, merchants on fat profits and artisans on thin stipends hobnobbed in the shade of the cool colonnade. High female laughter rang down from the loggia and further along, the gilded pillars of the twin-storied sun porch shone like molten copper in the glare of Apollo’s bright rays. Incredibly, far from dulling her senses, that brush with death had only heightened her lust for life and excitement, and Claudia was whistling to herself as the rough grass swished at her ankles.
    Would Cal, she wondered, be able to cast a beam of light on the identity of the mysterious huntsman who’d saved her from ending up a bear’s dinner, in the same way he’d sniffed out the sliding panel, the tunnel and the secret of the Great Hall—no doubt a deep underground cellar packed with ice, whose melted output formed a cascade. Probably, but it was the thought of that ice being put in a bucket to chill the hyssop wine which was uppermost on her list of priorities at the moment. Dear Juno, she prayed, don’t let all the ice in the bucket have melted. Not all of it. Let there be some left to bury my face in.
    ‘Cal?’ He was not at the entrance. ‘Are you there?’
    She lingered in the mouth of the underpass and frowned. He said he would wait. She’d told him not to, and that would be grist to Calvus’ mill. He’ll be here. He’s just off, fetching the ice. Voices and yawns