The Twelfth Night Murder Read Online Free PDF

surprise, but a pleasant one.
    One of the tarts moving through the room in search of a patron for the evening sidled up to Daniel, clearly the more affluent of the men at that table. The girl was uncommon-pretty. Her cheeks glowed with natural, ruddy health beneath porcelain skin. Her lips were full and soft, and when she smiled they showed dimples at the corners that seemed in turn to light up her eyes. Her high spirits and quick laugh made her eminently likeable, and Suzanne found her fascinating. There was something about this girl that simply lit up the room with joie de vivre. Suzanne couldn’t help smiling with her.
    She pressed her bosom to Daniel, batted her eyes, and vowed she was so thirsty she could just blow away on the slightest breeze. The way her mouth caressed the word “blow” with O-shaped lips, it was plain what she would give in return for a drink.
    Daniel replied, “Nonsense. You’re as full of piss and vinegar as any girl I’ve ever seen.” Suzanne knew he would buy the girl an ale, but he’d give her a hard time about it first. He might even expect her to take him upstairs immediately and save the drinking for after, but she thought probably not tonight. He wouldn’t care to leave herself and Ramsay in the same room.
    The tart’s bosom wasn’t as ample, and therefore not as revealed, as those of other girls in the room, but her lips were very soft and plump. They were painted a bold crimson that stood out in her very pale face like a winter rose on snow. When she smiled her teeth were large and quite white. Surely she must have been younger than she at first appeared. Tall for her age, and therefore no more than twelve or thirteen. Hardly old enough to have a bosom at all, never mind an ample one. During Suzanne’s day as a tart, she’d seen so many young girls such as this, she came to realize that at seventeen she’d entered the profession very late. She’d been nearly a hag when she’d started at Maddie’s, where other girls had arrived so young many couldn’t remember any other life.
    The girl wore a wig of nearly white blonde, and a dress of blue satin adorned with a profusion of cream-colored lace at wrist and breast, where it somewhat mitigated her lack of mature curves. Her waist was miniscule, so narrow Suzanne might have spanned it with her own rather small hands. Daniel’s one hand rested at the small of her back, and was barely hidden by it. The girl held a fan she waved before her face in tiny, precise movements while she eyed Daniel like a large cat sizing a doe for a kill, with an energy and mischief that mesmerized. Suzanne watched with an amused smile, as if enjoying a well-acted play.
    Then she realized what she was seeing was a true act. More than the usual feigned interest of a prostitute for a client, Suzanne sensed this was a put-on from the very bottom of it. The veins on the girl’s hands stood out in bulging blue ridges. When her fan dropped a little too low, in her throat could be seen a distinct Adam’s apple. A small one, to be sure, but it was there. She began to notice other things. The girl’s posture was just a tiny bit
too
feminine. Like a caricature of a female rather than a girl who has been one her entire life. The voice was too soft. Too . . . practiced. Suzanne realized what she was looking at was a boy in a dress. A boy just beginning his entry to manhood.
    A smile of mischief spread across her face as she watched Daniel flirt with the boy. Did he know, or would he soon learn a handful of what awaited beneath those skirts was more than he’d bargained for? Suzanne in the past had sometimes passed herself off as a boy, for men of that persuasion rarely cared for the boy bits and she could often service such a client without even disrobing much. She knew there was a demand for boys in dresses, but she’d never come across one. The laws against sodomy being what they were, those who practiced it kept to themselves for the most part. So far as