My Lord and Spymaster Read Online Free PDF

on him. Had he ever wanted a woman this much? “You’re something a man might pull up in his net one night. A mermaid, perfect and chill. Maybe you shed your scales and walked up Katherine Lane right out of the kingdom of the sea. Maybe that’s how a woman like you got there.”

    Without opening her eyes, she said clearly, “It’s dark.” Whoever she was talking to, it wasn’t him.

    “The lamps aren’t lit. I’ll do it soon.”

    “I c disize="3an’t . . .” Gradually, like a flower closing, she curled herself into a ball. When she hid her head in her arms, she smeared blood across her face. “I can’t get out.”

    “I’m here.”

    "Dark...”

    Because her eyes were shut. “I’ll make it light in a minute.”

    Loud thumps in the passageway said Tom was back. The boy slammed the door to the bulkhead, slopping water from the bucket. “Is she dead?”

    So much for his private idyll with a mermaid. “She’s not going to die. She’s going to sit up and ask why I keep a lazy, half-sized baboon in my cabin. Bring that over here.”

    He sat down on the bunk beside her and wet a corner of a towel in the bucket. He began to clean the scrapes on her hands. Tom, a precocious eleven, craned for a look under the blanket. “Gawd, ain’t she a beauty. An’ she sells that up on the Lane?”

    “Not to the likes of you.”

    The girl opened brown gold eyes. Her first sight was Tom’s face, level with her own. “I fell, Sir. I weren’t . . . careful. ” She tried to focus on him. “Who ’er you?”

    “I’m Tom. I’m pleased to make yer acquaintance.”

    “Tell ’im I can’t get out.”

    “What? Oh, yes, miss, I’ll tell ’im. Can I get you something? Cup of tea. The fire’s lit in the galley. I could get you a cup of tea, miss.”

    He could feel her shaking under the blanket. Fear and cold and confusion. “Tom.” He thumbed toward the door. “Lose yourself.”

    The girl’s gaze followed Tom as he left. Slowly she blinked her way around the cabin . . . bookshelves, the chart table, a stack of crates, and finally back to him. “Where am I?”

    “My ship. How many fingers am I holding up?”

    “You think I hit my head.” She freed a hand from the blanket and explored into her hair. “I did.”

    “How many fingers?”

    “Three.”

    “Does the light hurt your eyes?”

    “Everything hurts.” This time, when she tried to sit up, he helped her. He kept an arm around her while she huddled, hazy-eyed, clutching the blanket to her, looking bewildered. She would have aroused protective instincts in a stone.

    “Talk to me, sparrow. Who are you?”

    “Jess. I’m Jess.”

    When she’d been reeling in and out of consciousness, her voice had been pure East London. Now she sounded gentry. Somewhere, his cockney sparrow had picked up an education. She got more and more interesting. “Do you remember getting hit?”
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    She shook her head. Her face knotted in pain. “I shouldn’t do that.”

    “No, you shouldn’t. Do you know what day it is?”

    “No. I . . . Stop asking stupid questions.”

    She’d mislaid a couple pieces of her memory. He’d seen that happen once, when his bosun took a fall from the rigging. It had been a day before the man remembered what ship he was on. He never did remember the fall.

    “You’re still shivering. Let’s get you dry.” When she didn’t object, he picked up the towel and started unbraiding and untangling, blotting water out of her hair, making every move slow so he wouldn’t scare her.

    She was thinking the whole time, frowning. After a while she said, “I don’t remember everything. What happened to me?”

    “You fell under a wagon and got hurt.” They’d talk about it tomorrow. That was one of several discussions he had planned.

    Done. He put the towel down. Her hair dried up lighter than he’d expected, the color of a new-cut spar. Lovely. A man would keep this woman just for the pleasure of taking her hair down at