Wolf Whistle Read Online Free PDF Page B

two. And some honeyed apricots. There was a cake on the hall floor, I ate that as well, actually there was two, so you can have the other one if you like.’
    He pulled Claudia’s second honey cake out from his shirt and handed it across. The transformation was astonishing, she thought. Clean, his hair was at least two shades lighter, and his face was quite cute, once the dirt’d been scrubbed off. The lice had probably clogged up the drains.
    Marcus studied the hot, misshapen offering and politely declined.
    ‘Why do you wear a long tunic?’ Jovi pointed to Orbilio’s trademark patrician attire. ‘I’ve never seen a man in a frock before, are you a priest?’
    ‘He has knobbly knees, soldier. People laugh at them, so he keeps them covered up. Shouldn’t you be in bed?’
    ‘Pff! I’m far too excited to sleep!’ Jovi stuffed the honey cake into his mouth. ‘I’ll go fetch you them pies,’ he said, crumbs spraying everywhere. ‘There’s lots to choose from, I had quail and then I had duck, but there’s all sorts of others, which do you want? Cypassis says beef for brawn, fish for brains—’
    ‘He already has fish for brains, Jovi. You bring back anything that looks nice.’
    As his little feet pitter-pattered up the atrium, Marcus sluiced water over his matted hair. ‘Why, Claudia Seferius, I do declare you’ve been unfaithful in my absence.’
    Claudia froze in her tracks. That was the trouble with Supersnoop. He disturbed her. He disturbed her and she resented him for it, and when she turned there was ice in her eyes. ‘Don’t get ideas above your station, Orbilio. Didn’t you know this is National Stray Day? I’m merely doing my bit for the Empire.’
    He studied her lazily for several seconds. ‘How much are you in for?’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘The loan sharks. How much are you in for?’
    Claudia brushed an imaginary speck off her pale-lemon tunic. ‘Nasty crack on the head you sustained. Makes you ramble.’
    ‘My steward informs me’—Orbilio winced as he combed out his tangles—‘that a moneylender called at my house recently. Apparently he required to speak with a lady by the name of—well, I forget what she called herself, it really doesn’t matter.’
    ‘If it doesn’t matter, why are you telling me?’
    ‘Now my steward is a cautious type of chap. He’s Libyan, you know, and they’re instinctively suspicious. He wondered whether this might be a ruse, to find out who lived there with a view to burglary, or perhaps casing the goldbeater’s opposite. You do know there’s a goldbeater’s opposite?’
    ‘Opposite where?’
    ‘The point is,’ he continued amiably, ‘my steward, being Libyan and extremely quick off the mark, realized at once that the description of this mystery woman fitted you down to the ground.’
    ‘Rubbish. He’s only seen me once.’
    ‘Once, Claudia, is enough,’ said Orbilio. ‘So I’ll ask you a third time. How much are you in for?’
    Claudia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Mind your own business,’ she replied, sweeping out of the bath room.
    ‘That much, eh?’
    She pulled up sharp by the family shrine and drew out a handkerchief. ‘With my dear, sweet husband,’ she sniffed, ‘still warm in his grave—’
    ‘Claudia. You married Gaius because he was old and filthy rich, and unless he’s interred over a volcano, it’s unlikely his ashes have stayed warm for seven whole months.’
    There was, she decided, an unseemly twinkle in his eye for a man addressing the recently bereaved.
    Claudia let the handkerchief fall. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t. ‘Orbilio, I do not go into debt lightly.’ (Hell no, I sail in fully laden.) ‘At the moment I admit, I have a short-term cash-flow problem.’ (When I die, it’s finished with.) ‘So while we’re in the business of repeating things, I’ll say it again. Mind your own damned business.’ The lanterns flickering from their bronze and silver stands brought the painted songbirds