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"Keep your pegos buttoned, both of you" Brae "The only e’ll accomplish our task and be quit of this place is if the local er to cooperate if we’re seducing their sisters and daughters"
"What precisely are you saying, Bra as we’re encalance at Thorne "That’s an order"
The lieutenant made no reply, save to skewer the two skinned hares on a sharpened branch
"Since when do I take orders froaze at him "Since my father died, and I came back from the Peninsula to find you stickpin-deep in debt, that’s when I don’t relish the duty, but I hold your fortune in trust for the next severalyour bills, you’ll do as I say Unless you get married, in which case you’d spare us both the better part of a year’s aggravation"
"Oh yes Marriage being a fine way for a ravation" Colin shoved to his feet and stalked away, into the shadows
"Where do you think you’re going?" Bram called Colin elcome to have his adolescent sulk, but he should take care They hadn’t checked the soundness of the entire castle, and there were those steep bluffs nearby
"I’ to have a piss, dear cousin Or did you want o buttoned for that, too?"
Braement It seemed ridiculous that a man of six-and-twenty, a viscount since his tender years, should even require a trustee But the tere the tiitimate heir--clearly stipulated that the Payne fortune was held in trust until Colin eitheras Colin was his responsibility, Bram knew of no better way to handle the situation than tofellows and drilled a sense of discipline and duty into them Deserters, debtors, hardened criminalsthe man seated across the fire, for one If Saood, anyvolunteers," he told his corporal
Thorne nodded, turning the roasting hares on the spit
"The village seein"
Another barely perceptible nod
"Sheepdogs," Thorne mused sometime later "Perhaps I’ll find a few They’d coas," Bram said He wasn’t one for pets "We’ll only be here asound in the shadows had the their heads A bat, perhaps Or ain, he supposed it was just as likely a rat
"What we need in this place," Thorne said, "is a cat"
Bra a cat"
Thorne looked to the woolly beast at his knee and cocked a brow "You seeoes home tomorrow"
"And if he doesn’t?"
"He’s dinner"
Five
In a village of wonats The s the next , Susanna was inundated with queries and questions She ought to have known she would be besieged Young ladies crowded around her like hens after corn, pecking for bits of infor, is it true?" Nineteen-year-old Sally, the second eldest of the Bright children, leaned eagerly over the counter
"That would depend" Susanna lifted her hands to untie the ribbons of her bonnet As she worked the knots loose, anticipation in the shop built to a palpable fever
"Depend on what?"
"On who ‘they’ are, and precisely what it is they’re saying" She spoke calmly Someone had to
"They say we’ve been invaded!" Violet Winterbottom said "By men"
"What else would we be invaded by? Wolves?"
Susanna looked about the shop, taking a hts and enjoy the faht never failed to enchant her The first tih she’d stumbled upon Ali Baba’s treasure cave
The shop’s front was lined with south-facing diaolden sunlight Each of its other three walls was stacked, floor to lofty ceiling, with shelves--and those shelves were craoods of every sort Bolts of silk and lace, quills and bottles of ink, buttons and brilliants, charcoal and pig powder, andin the midday sun
"The inn’s scullery maid had it all from her brother" Sally’s cheeks were pink with excitement "A band of officers have encamped on the bluffs"
"Is it true there’s a lord in their party?" Violet asked
Susanna removed her bonnet and laid it aside "Yes, some officers are temporarily encamped on the castle bluffs And no, there is not a lord in the party" She paused "There are two"