To Kiss A Spy Read Online Free PDF

that cracked like glass beneath booted feet.
    A group of chattering men and women emerged from the great hall behind him, eddying around him as they grumbled at the cold and the difficulty of the journey home. Pen was among them, pulling the furred hood of her cloak over her head. She saw Owen, in fact if she thought about it she would have said that she felt his presence the instant before she saw him. He smiled at her, and without volition she smiled back. He took a step towards her but a couple pushed between them, and Pen made no attempt to resist the tide of humanity that carried her out of the hallway and into the bitter night.
    Owen’s page scrambled back through the crowd, his cheeks red from the cold. “ ’Twill be a two-hour wait for a barge, sir. And ’tis freezing hard.”
    Owen merely nodded, his expression customarily impassive except for a gleam in his dark eyes. “Then the sooner we leave the better, Cedric.” He put a hand on the lad’s shoulder.
    “ ’Tis powerful cold,” Cedric muttered, looking longingly at the brightly lit hall behind his master. “We could wait here a bit, sir, just until the crowd’s gone.”
    “I’ve no desire to linger, boy. A walk will warm you. Come.” He propelled the page ahead of him out of the house.
    Pen, when she reached the water steps amid the crowd, stamped her feet, hugged her arms across her chest, and looked around disconsolately. The line of barges and wherries waiting to pull into the steps seemed infinite, their bobbing cressets visible in the far distance across the black water, and the number of people ahead of her in the line was more than she could count. It was going to be an inhumanly long wait for passage.
    She thrust her gloved hand beneath her cloak and clasped the little embroidered purse. She could almost feel the crisp fold of parchment within. Once she got back to Baynard’s Castle and the privacy of her own chamber she could examine it properly. A surge of excitement ran through her, warming her despite the bone-chilling air. She forgot her fatigue, and her frustration at the crowd and the long wait became an impatient need to do something decisive. If she stayed where she was she wouldn’t see her bed before daybreak.
    She stepped back from the throng. The Horseferry water steps were no more than a ten-minute walk and the crowds would be much less there.
    Of course the walk would take her through the maze of dark lanes surrounding the Bryanston mansion. In daylight she wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but on such a bitter black night . . .
    Suddenly making up her mind, Pen looked around for a torchman to light her way. A sullen fellow, a Bryanston servant, came shivering to answer her call. He set off ahead of her, holding his torch high to illuminate the dark alleys they had to thread to reach the Horseferry steps.
    Huddled in her fur-lined cloak, Pen picked her way carefully over the icy ground trying to keep up with his light, but he was impatient and his booted feet had a firmer grip of the ground than her thinner-soled sandals. She cursed him under her breath, and would have cursed herself for missing the princess’s departure and a brazier-warmed journey home on comfortable cushioned seats out of the wind, except that the same excitement, the residue of her earlier recklessness, and a surging anticipation infused her.
    The sudden “Holla!” from behind her startled her. She spun around and found herself instantly surrounded by ragged dark-clad figures, men, some women, even children. She yelled for the torchman, who looked behind him and then ran into the darkness, holding his torch aloft.
    “Cowardly scum!” Pen exclaimed between her teeth, for the moment too angry at his desertion to feel fear. But that lasted barely an instant, to be followed immediately by the desperate certainty that she should have stayed at the Bryanstons’ steps and waited it out among the crowd. Instead she had yielded to a stupid impulse,