The Return of the Prodigal Read Online Free PDF Page B

yes? We should go now. Tonight.”
    “Tonight?” Rian laughed. “I don’t think so, Lisette. Tonight I want you here, beside me. We’ll leave tomorrow.”
    “No!” She rushed back to the bed, climbed in beside him. “They watch in the daytime.”
    “What? Who watches?” Suddenly Lisette didn’t seem to be an asset to him, not if she believed such nonsense. She spoke like a child living in a fantasy world, or one who saw bogeymen where there were none.
    “I tried to leave, months ago, just before you came here, you and the other soldiers. They stopped me, said I was ungrateful. They took all my wages that I had hoarded, and no longer pay me. I so want to be far away from here.”
    Rian rubbed at his suddenly aching head. Prolonged thinking was still beyond him, damn it. Feeling, touching, desiring, indulging his senses—those worked for him, quite nicely. But to think, really think? That wasn’t so easy. “Far away from here, you said. That brings us to another question, Lisette. Where, exactly, is here? I should know, but I don’t.”
    “Valenciennes, of course. We are closer to Valenciennes than anywhere else. I told you that, yes?”
    “Probably,” Rian answered, cursing himself for not paying more attention when Lisette spoke to him. But it was so much easier to drift, to think of nothing of any consequence. Although he felt more alert tonight. Perhaps making love to Lisette helped to concentrate his mind? He could think of worse ways to nudge his brain. “I’ll need a map, Lisette. To see how far we are from the coast.”
    “There is no need,” she told him quickly. “I have been planning this for some time now. Since the day the Comte stroked my hair and asked if my hair was this same color…everywhere. He is a filthy man, Rian, and I must be gone before he returns. And if he knew that you…that you had gotten to me before him, your life would be forfeit, no matter his plans for you. You see that, don’t you? For all of this, we must go. I have sneaked into the Comte ’s study, I have seen a map. I have a route already decided.”
    “He asked you such a crude question? Bastard. No wonder you’re frightened,” Rian said, his right hand balling into a fist. He would like to linger, to thank his benefactor, and then knock him down. How long had Lisette lived with this fear? “Are we within walking distance to the coast?”
    She shook her head. “Not if anyone were to come looking for us, no. We would needs must move faster than that. But I have a plan for how to get the money we will need for the journey.”
    “Of course you do. You have a head full of plans, don’t you, Lisette?”
    “Do not laugh at me. You could no more fight off the Comte than could I. Oh! Je suis très stupide! Don’t frown! I’m sorry, Rian. I didn’t mean that. I really didn’t.”
    “So you don’t see me in the role of protector? How shocking. Never mind, Lisette. I know my worth as a protector now. I know how useless I am. Tell me about your plan.”
    “I am so sorry to have said that, Rian.”
    “Lisette, enough. The plan.”
    “If you’ve forgiven me? Very well. I will steal from the Comte, of course. I volunteered to houseclean his private chambers this past spring, and that lent me the excuse to rip and tear everywhere, to find every last bit of dirt. I am very good at finding dirt. I found a leather purse at the back of his wardrobe.”
    “And you took it? That was dangerous, Lisette.”
    She looked at him as if he’d just told her he could fly. “Of course I didn’t take it, Rian. I left it just where it was. After I’d counted the coins inside it. Gold coins, Rian Becket. English coins. Worth even more than their weight in gold now that the French treasury is in shambles. The purse is still there, and still full. I checked on it tonight, to be sure, before I came to you. That is why I was so late.”
    “You’ve thought this out well, Lisette,” he said carefully. “There’s only one