No Proper Lady Read Online Free PDF

bathroom. She knelt by the tin tub and began to run the water.
    Joan looked away. They said this was how the Traitor Lords lived, with people waiting on them hand and foot. When Rose stood and stepped toward her, Joan stumbled backward, revolted in a way that had nothing to do with the marks on her own body or the girl herself. “I can bathe on my own,” she said quickly, forcing herself back to pleasant neutrality. “Dress myself too. Thanks.”
    “Of course, miss,” said Rose, surprise changing to sympathy on her face. “I’ll set the tray by your bed then, when I bring it up?”
    “Thank you,” Joan said.
    When Rose left, Joan took a deep breath, then closed her eyes and let it out slowly. This isn’t a bad place , she told herself, and you’re not a bad person for enjoying it. Missions have benefits. If this one’s got more than most, there’s a reason for that.
    Then she opened her eyes and shucked off the wet dress as fast as she could, peeling it down her torso and kicking it away from her legs. Her boots went too, and she finally curled her bare feet into the carpet. The thick, golden-red patterned stuff was better than even the captains or the administrators had back home.
    Talk about hazard pay!
    Joan got into the bath slowly with one foot, then the other, gradually sinking down until everything below her neck was submerged. The water was hot enough to make her wince when it hit the cuts on her leg and some scratches on her back she hadn’t been aware of, but she wasn’t complaining. No way. If she’d closed her eyes, she’d have fallen asleep then and there.
    Instead, Joan made good use of the washcloth and some soap that smelled like roses. She scrubbed hard. Seeing dirt peel away from her skin was satisfying, if a bit disturbing. It took three washings before she thought she had gotten all the demon blood out of her hair, and when she got out of the tub, the water was dingy brown.
    The nightgown was warm and very soft. Back in the bedroom, she found dinner on her nightstand, sitting under a silver dome and smelling delicious, with a glass of red wine beside it. Joan had mostly been able to ignore her stomach before, but now it woke up and screamed like a spoiled child. She lifted the dome quickly, revealing half a chicken, hot bread with real butter, and soup with beans and carrots floating in it.
    If she hadn’t been trained, if she hadn’t seen men die after gorging themselves on an unexpected feast, Joan would have fallen on the meal like a hungry dog. She made herself eat slowly instead. It was very pleasant torture. Nothing on the plate was gritty or hard, and the meat was so tender she almost didn’t have to chew it. And apparently this wasn’t anything special here, just a meal for a rainy day.
    Joan couldn’t eat all of it or even much more than half. When Rose, returning, gave the tray a wide-eyed look, Joan dropped her eyes and looked away. “I hadn’t been eating much,” she said, speaking only partly to the girl. She could feel the shades of her family and her comrades watching her, their eyes hollow and hungry.
    “Yes, miss,” Rose said with another one of those sympathetic looks. “Shall I put out the light for you?”
    “Yes. Please.”
    Tired as she was, Joan woke sometime before morning. She didn’t know when. At first, she didn’t know where she was. She knew that it was dark and that she was alone.
    For a long moment, she held still, waiting to hear the sounds or see the movements that would tell her what to do next. There was nothing at first, then the slow and comfortless return of memory.
    She was alone—alone in a world she knew even less about than she’d thought.
    Earlier, she’d taken pleasure in being well fed and clean and in the softness and warmth of the bed. Later, she might enjoy those things again. Now, in the dark, they only reminded her of what lay ahead.
    Nothing came for free. Not even in this world, pleasant as it seemed. Joan already knew the