Wolf Whistle Read Online Free PDF Page A

could not recall a single dull moment under this roof. For Master Gaius, Leonides would have bent over backwards and done handstands. For the young mistress, he would lay down his life.
    In her bath room, Claudia dismissed the attendants with a clap of her hands and sank into the luxurious hot water, where flowerheads of hyacinth and cyclamen and pink-lilac sea stocks bobbed about like ducks, wafting out their fragrance as they passed. Gradually muscles stopped screaming, lungs ceased to burn, and Claudia’s thoughts turned to the moneylender. Or rather, to the reason she had needed him in the first place. Where had it gone wrong? For the average woman, of course, dragging themselves out of the gutter and marrying, for his money, a man who obligingly pops his clogs when you’re still twenty-four would have been ample. Unfortunately when you’re not Miss Average but are addicted to thrills, the path is more often prickled than primrose and when danger is no longer around to seduce you, the buzz has to come from somewhere. Hence the fall of the dice, the pluck of the gladiators, the fluke of the turn for a chariot. All too quickly, though, Claudia discovered Luck was no reliable investment counsellor. Gambling debts mounted, her inheritance dwindled, the dealings with moneylenders increased. She crumpled a marigold in her fist. Worst of all, the wine business Gaius had left her was ailing, purely because men refused to deal with a woman! Somehow she’d rectify that, but until then…youth comes but once, so why waste it?
    Refreshed and replete, she hooked the door to with her toe, grappling with wraps, jars and mirrors under one arm and a jug of Falernian wine under the other. There were two honey cakes in her right hand and a goblet, half full, in her left. The tortoiseshell comb she gripped with her teeth. The atrium, thank heavens, was deserted, affording privacy, air, space to breathe, time to appreciate the birds captured in silent song by the artist’s brush, to—
    What was that?
    Claudia tipped her head on one side. There it was again. Three knocks at the vestibule door. Not hard, not soft, but certainly not tentative. Curious, she decided against calling the porter back from his break and, after a valiant juggling act with her burdens, eased open the door herself.
    The comb spat from her mouth.
    The man leaning in the doorway would have been taller still, had it not been for the stoop where he was clutching his stomach. His hair was dark, with a tendency to curl, although right now most of it was matted with dark, sticky blood, which trickled down the side of his face to join the growing stain on his once-white tunic. His left eye was red and swollen and closing fast.
    ‘Lovely evening,’ he rasped. ‘Don’t you think?’
    With unexpected grace, he slithered slowly down the door jamb into unconsciousness.
    *
    Claudia’s instinct was to slam the door in his face. By the gods, she didn’t need this! She threw down her wrap and the jug and the mirror, but not in order to play nurse. This man (correction, this human ferret) was the only person in Rome who knew the truth about Claudia, the single weak link in an otherwise sturdy chain. And now he turns up here! The honey cakes bounced, but the fall of the alabaster pot was broken by a heap of yellow cotton. Look at him. It wasn’t the first time they’d crossed swords, but every time it was akin to tossing water on to acid. Explosive. Tentacles of grey mist coiled up the street, bringing with them a conglomeration of onions, damp donkey fur and the sickly scent of pomegranates fallen from a cart. Lips pursed, Claudia prodded the comatose lump. He’d been worked over by experts, but the damage was purely superficial. Hell, let him bleed on his own wretched doorstep!
    From a distance she heard a voice saying, ‘As far as I am aware, the gods of this threshold do not actually require a blood sacrifice.’
    Incredibly, the voice appeared to be hers.
    Marcus