Lara Read Online Free PDF Page A

but now their time together was growing short.
    “And we are poor,” she noted. “Have we nothing of value that we could sell that would allow you to enter the tourney, Da?”
    “It is very costly, Lara, and I have not the means. Or so I thought until recently. I have one item, and one only, of great value. I have you.”
    “Me?” She said genuinely surprised, and a small tendril of fear rose within her. She pushed it away. “What value have I, Da?”
    He smiled at her innocence. “Lara, you are extraordinarily beautiful, and you have your virginity, which has great value. As you have noted, we are poor. I have no dowry for you. I cannot make a match for you without one. It is all I can do to make ends meet. Now that my guild is receiving fewer and fewer assignments, there is less work for me, which means no coins in my pocket. I need to move up in the world, Lara, for all our sakes. What will become of you, of Susanna, of your brother if I do not? I know I can triumph in the coming tournament if I can but find the means to enter it.”
    “That is why Susanna took me to the house of Gaius Prospero, isn’t it, Da?” she said thoughtfully. “That is why I was stripped naked, and why a physician probed my body, isn’t it? The Master of the Merchants will pay a handsome price for me. He would purchase me.”
    “Ten thousand cubits, daughter,” John Swiftsword replied.
    Lara nodded slowly. “It is a great price, Da. Am I truly worth all that gold?”
    “More,” he told her, “for Gaius Prospero expects to make a profit from you, Lara. I think he will probably gain double or more when he sells you.”
    “What will he do with me, Da?” she asked. Suddenly she was truly afraid, and she trembled. Then swallowing hard, she fought back her fears, reminding herself that her father loved her. He would do nothing to harm her.
    “I expect he will sell you into a Pleasure House,” her father answered, his arm tightening around his daughter in a small gesture of comfort.
    “Pleasure Women are admired, Da. They live lives of great luxury and privilege,” Lara said. Then she reached out and patted his hand. “You must not be sad. What other future could I have? You have sold me then?” She had to be brave for her father’s sake. She could see he was distressed. It wasn’t a terrible fate, and actually a better one than she had considered, given their circumstances.
    He nodded wordlessly.
    “When must I go?” Her face was pensive. “Not right away, Da!”
    “The day after the tourney, daughter,” John Swiftsword told her.
    Lara clapped her hands. “Then I shall see you attain your goal, Da! That is good. I will go with a light heart knowing that I have been able to aid you in this way.”
    “If there were any other way, Lara,” he began, but she put a little hand over his mouth.
    “If there were, Da, you would have found it for us,” she said quietly. “The Celestial Actuary gives us each a talent. Yours is skill with a sword. I will make my way through life using my beauty. If I had been born ugly, you would have already put me into service in some magnate’s house where I would be at the mercy of all. Nay. This is much better. I shall be a famous Pleasure Woman like Roxelana of the Rose. She bought her freedom, and now manages a Pleasure House. I would be like that. Charting my own destiny. At the mercy of no one.”
    “I had not expected such understanding from you, Lara,” he told her gratefully.
    “Sometimes I think my mother comes to me in the night, and whispers wisdom in my ear, Da. I am young, but there are times when I feel that I have lived a thousand years or more,” she told him with a small smile.
    “There are moments when you amaze me, daughter,” John Swiftsword told his eldest child. “Thank you for understanding my position, for understanding what I must do. I did not make this decision that will affect all of our lives either easily or lightly.” He tipped her from his lap,