Randall #03 - Sherwood Ltd. Read Online Free PDF Page B

You lads are up to something.”
    The TV watchers yelled. A man in a paint-spattered hoodie threw a beer can at the television.
    “Bollocks!” he shouted. “Bleeding, bollocksy wankers!”
    Eye-patch man gulped whiskey.
    “You’d better be a Leeds supporter, Duchess, or these barbarians will tear you limb from limb.”
    I tried to smile, feeling as if I’d been dropped into a wild animal cage at an alien zoo. Those Merry Men of Sherwood stories were terribly romantic, but the reality of unwashed, uncivilized men was not.
    “Sorry, I don’t know anything about Leeds—or Manchester United either. I don’t follow soccer, I’m afraid.”
    “What did you say?” said a small, dark man with a jutting jaw and eyebrows like wayward caterpillars. His voice held as much menace as the eye patch man’s.
    They all turned to glare at me. Soccer. I’d called it soccer. Not good.
    “I mean football. I don’t know much about Leeds or Manchester United, um, Man U, I guess it’s called…”
    No, I must have said that wrong, too. The glares got darker.
    “You’ve got the pronunciation wrong there,” said the dark little man, who was rolling his own cigarette from what appeared to be a communal tobacco pouch. “Around here, you don’t say ‘Man U.’ It’s pronounced ‘scum’.”
    All the men laughed, including Eye-Patch.
    “We’re still fighting the Wars of the Roses over here,” said a young man who looked to be of Indian descent. “It’s still York vs. Lancashire, six hundred years later.” As he turned back to watch the screen, I noticed he sat in a wheelchair.
    “You’re from America?” said Eye-Patch, scrutinizing me again. “You people don’t know shit about making whiskey.” He stumbled toward the TV, where something noisy was happening. After emptying the bottle with one last swallow, he threw it at an overflowing trash can in the corner. It missed and shattered on the floor.
    The TV watchers gave an angry roar.
    “Lost again, fuckers!” somebody shouted.
    Chaos descended. Liam, who had been backing toward the doors, disappeared into the factory. A second later, the lights went out. A crash came from above as a rusty trap door opened and a ladder swung down, knocking the drunken Eye-Patch to the floor.
    The men swarmed Eye-Patch. In the light from the streetlamp outside, I could see the dark little man grab the knife while two others held Eye-patch down. He roared in fury. They roared back, using a remarkable assortment of obscenities.
    An authoritative voice came from above. “Excellent work, lads.” A flashlight flared, and a man’s legs descended the ladder. “Take him outside,” the man said, shining the flashlight on Eye-Patch’s limp body. “The Swynsby constabulary can find him accommodation for the night.”
    Peter Sherwood’s grinning face appeared as he hung from the swinging ladder.
    “And lads…Watch your sodding language. There’s a lady present.”
    With raucous laughter they dragged the old man to the outer door. The man in the wheelchair led the charge to the cobbled street outside.
    “Hello, Camilla Randall!” Peter said, “Catch the torch!”
    He tossed me the flashlight. I directed the beam at the ceiling and saw Peter hanging from the ladder, wearing a tuxedo, complete with bow tie—a large, purple one. From the hole above him, he extricated a battered bouquet of daffodils and leaped to the cafeteria floor, landing with an athlete’s grace.
    He offered me the flowers along with an irresistible grin and a bow worth of Errol Flynn himself.
    “Welcome to Sherwood, M’lady.”

Chapter 10—Down the Rabbit Hole
     
    I stood in the dark cafeteria—daffodils in one hand, flashlight in the other, alone with this tuxedo-clad man who had just knocked out an apparently homicidal creditor with a kick to the head.
    My new publisher.
    I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. But since my face seemed to be frozen in a stiff smile, I did neither.
    Peter, with a cheery