Slightly Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page B

courtroom,” she said. “It is no longer an inn dining parlor but a courtroom, in which the very life of a noble man hangs in the balance. It is a desperate situation. There would seem to be no hope. They are all here, all the principal players of the drama. Shylock sits in that chair.” She pointed at the chair Rannulf was occupying.
    “I am Portia,” she said. “But I am disguised as a young man.”
    Rannulf pursed his lips in amusement as she looked around again. She lifted her arms, pulled back her hair, twisted it, and knotted it at the back of her neck. Then she disappeared for a moment into the bedchamber and came back buttoning his caped cloak about her. She still looked about as different as it was possible to be from any man. And then she had finished doing up the buttons and looked up directly into his eyes.
    Rannulf almost recoiled from the hard, controlled expression on her face.
    “‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’ ” she told him in a voice to match the expression.
    For a moment, foolishly, he thought that it was she, Claire Campbell, who was addressing him, Rannulf Bedwyn.
    “‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath,’ ” she continued, coming closer to him, her expression softening slightly, becoming more pleading.
    Devil take it, he thought, she was Portia, and he was that damned villain, Shylock.
    “‘It is twice blest.’ ”
    It was not a very long speech, but by the time she had finished it, Rannulf was thoroughly ashamed of himself and ready to pardon Antonio and even go down on his knees to grovel and beg pardon for having considered cutting a pound of flesh from his body. She was bending over him, tight-lipped and keen eyed, waiting for his answer.
    “By Jove,” he said, “Shylock must have been made of iron.”
    He was, he realized, half aroused. She was very good. She could bring a role alive without any of the fancy theatrics he associated with all the most famous actors and actresses he had ever seen onstage.
    She straightened up and smiled at him, unbuttoning his cloak as she did so.
    “What else can you do?” he asked. “Juliet?”
    She made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I am two and twenty,” she said. “Juliet was about eight years younger and a pea-goose at that. I have never understood the appeal of that play.”
    He chuckled. She was not a romantic, then.
    “Ophelia?” he suggested.
    She looked pained. “I suppose men like watching weak women,” she said with something like contempt in her voice. “They do not come any weaker than that silly Ophelia. She should simply have snapped her fingers in Hamlet’s face and told him to go and boil his head in oil.”
    Rannulf threw his head back and shouted with laughter. She was looking pink and contrite when he lifted his head again.
    “I’ll do Lady Macbeth,” she said. “She was foolish and could not sustain her wickedness, but she was no weakling for all that.”
    “Her sleepwalking scene?” he asked. “Where she is washing her hands of blood?”
    “There. You see?” She looked contemptuous again as she gestured toward him with one arm. “I suppose most men like that scene best. Wicked woman finally breaks down into madness because typical woman cannot be eternally strong.”
    “Macbeth was hardly sane either by the end,” he reminded her. “I would say Shakespeare was impartial in his judgment of the relative strength of the male and female spirit.”
    “I’ll do Lady Macbeth persuading Macbeth to murder Duncan,” she said.
    And he, Rannulf supposed, was to be a silent Macbeth.
    “But first,” she said, “I will finish my wine.”
    Her glass was two-thirds full. She drained it in one gulp and set down the empty glass. Then she undid the knot of hair at her neck, and shook her hair free.
    “Macbeth has just told his wife, ‘We will proceed no further in this business,’ ” she said. “He is backing out of the planned murder; she is spurring