Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) Read Online Free PDF Page B

departing from the field of battle, leaving him alone with the enemy.
    But one of the groundskeepers, who had stood silently by with the others, a low green hood pulled over his face, paused in the doorway, his brown hand clutching the frame so that even when the guard hustling him out pushed his shoulder he remained in place. He said in a thick voice, “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
    The baron, who had turned to contemplate the fire, looked up. The firelight playing in his eyes gave him the appearance of some devil trying to recall his victim’s sin. “What did you say?” he demanded of the lone groundsman.
    “I said, I wouldn’t put it past her. Climbing down to the Wilderlands, that is.” Suddenly the groundskeeper’s voice altered and became almost, but not quite, familiar. He said, “I wouldn’t put anything past Lady Daylily. Best not to underestimate her.”
    Before the baron could reply, the hooded man was gone. The baron took two steps in pursuit before halting and deciding against such a chase. He returned to his study of the fire, and Foxbrush, in his hungry, sweating corner, could only hope the baron would not turn those devil eyes upon him.
    At length the baron said, very quietly, “Get out.”
    Foxbrush mustered himself and fled.

    The figs in the basket had all turned to putrid mush in the heat of the day. Foxbrush, hungry as he was, was not quite as disappointed as he might have been. There were times when, no matter how urgently a man’s body might cry out, a man’s spirit cannot comply.
    He felt sick to his stomach.
    Foxbrush, like most young men of limited experience misled by centuries of poets, had always believed that heartbreak would lodge itself in . . . well, in the heart. Yet his heart beat on at a healthy if rapid rate.
    His gut, however, felt as though someone had scooped it out and filled it with gnawing worms.
    He sat gingerly at his desk, perched on the edge of his seat. No one had thought to light so much as a candle in his study, and little of the sky’s dusky glow found its way through the window into his room. It was very like—and he shuddered at this—the gloom of the Occupation.
    He should light a lamp. One sat at the ready by his elbow. But somehow he could not bear the notion of being alone with himself that night, and the dark kept his thoughts momentarily at bay.
    He bowed his head and the worms in his belly writhed. “Why in Lumé’s name did I write that dragon-eaten letter?”
    What was it Daylily had said to him those few short months ago when he, down on one knee, had asked the crucial question?
    “I’ll marry you, Prince Foxbrush,” she’d said, “but only with the understanding that you will never love me.”
    But she knew. Dragons blast it, the whole kingdom knew that he adored her! Had he not made a fool of himself during her previous wedding week last winter, when her then groom, Lionheart, had left her alone in the middle of the dance floor before the eyes of the whole court? And Foxbrush had stepped forward and taken her in his arms. Gallant Foxbrush, ready to save the day! Noble Foxbrush, eager to salvage his fair one’s honor!
    Clumsy Foxbrush, who danced like a clockwork soldier, and within three turns had trod upon her dress once and her feet twice.
    “Let me go, you dolt,” Daylily had hissed so that none but he would hear above the music. And she’d wrenched herself from his arms, and it was his turn to be left alone in the middle of the dance floor, while she made her way after Lionheart.
    From that day on, he’d heard the young gallants of the court whisper behind his back: “Foxbrush Left Feet!” But really, Hymlumé love him, was it his fault that in all his academic pursuits, he’d never encountered a course on courtly dancing?
    There was no one to blame but himself, however, for writing those letters.
    In the dark, Foxbrush flipped a switch to open a “secret” compartment in his desk—which wasn’t so much “secret”