Dark Jenny (15 page)

“Aren’t you a little old to keep acting like a horny teenager?” she said, but with a smile. “This could just be a trick to get close enough to do you in.”

I closed the door behind her. “A man’s got to die from something.”

She slipped the cloak from her shoulders and tossed it over the back of a chair. “Truer words were never spoken.”

My grin faded. She held a long, shining straight razor.

She scowled when she saw my expression. “Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not going to slit your throat. I just thought that if you lost your beard, you’d be harder to recognize.”

“Oh.”

“You’re paranoid.”

“It’s served me well.”

“Yeah, well, not tonight it hasn’t.” She quickly arranged a pitcher and bowl on the table, turned a chair toward the lamp, and motioned for me to sit.

“
You’re
going to shave me?” I said dubiously.

She put one hand on her hip. It accented her curves, as did the long, low-cut dress, complete with black lace at the wrists. I suddenly realized that she’d
dressed up
for me. “The first surgeons were also barbers,” she said wryly. “Trust me.”

The skeptical old soldier in me listed all the ways this could be a trap. “Uhm … maybe you should just keep me company while I do it.”

“That should be fun to watch, unless you’re left-handed.”

She had me there. Still, it would be a brilliant way to get me off guard and finish me with little fuss.

“You either trust me or you don’t, Eddie. But I have to tell you, if you won’t let me close enough to shave you, you’ll
never
get me into bed.”

At last I said, “Well, since you put it
that
way…”

I took off my shirt, a little self-conscious of my less than youthful belly, but I figured a doctor wouldn’t mind. When I turned to face her, though, her eyes were wide with something very much like awe. “My
God,
” she whispered.

For just the tiniest fraction of a second I thought my physique had rendered her speechless, then I realized what she meant. “Yeah,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”

She bent close to examine the three-inch puckered scar near the center of my chest. Then she scurried around to look at my back. “It went all the way
through
?” she gasped.

I nodded.

“And you didn’t drown in your own blood? Or die from gangrene?”

I shook my head. “I was off my feet for a while, though.”

“I’ll bet.” Now she regarded me with a mix of pity, admiration, and tenderness. “What
happened
?”

“It was a long time ago,” I repeated, and stared at the wall. I couldn’t meet Iris’s eyes because I might see Janet’s instead. And then I’d hear her screams.

After a moment Iris said, “Okay. It just surprised me on a professional level. Most injuries like that don’t get the chance to develop into scars.”

I shrugged. “We all get surprised sometimes.”

I took the offered seat. She wrapped a towel around my neck, then lathered me up with something she produced from her bag. It smelled pungently fresh, and I was alert for any change in awareness the fumes might bring about. When nothing happened, I finally relaxed. It was a tremendously luxurious feeling.

She ran the blade up the side of my neck and just over my jawline. It went
shckt
as it sliced through my whiskers. I said, “So how come you haven’t bagged one of these handsome, wealthy knights?”

“Who says I haven’t?” She rinsed the blade in the water basin.

“No ring.”

“Most doctors don’t wear jewelry. Tends to snag on the edges of wounds.”

“That’s nice to know. But you didn’t answer my question.”

The razor skitched up my cheek. A big blob of soapy beard dropped onto the towel over my chest. She said, “I don’t care for soldiers much. I know lots of women swoon over a man in uniform, but I’ve seen them at their worst. Once a man is taught to be violent, it becomes his first instinct. And when there’s no war to fight, way too many of them turn it toward their women.”

“I was a soldier once. And my current job requires violence on occasion.”

“I know.”

“But you’re here.”

She rinsed the blade in the bowl. “You’re different. You stuck up for that girl when you didn’t have to.”

“I just happened to be there. Any decent guy would have.”

“My point exactly. There aren’t many decent guys in armor. Some are better than others, of course. Bob Kay comes close. But even he wouldn’t take a swing at Dave Agravaine. And believe me, that guy’s needed his face smashed in for a long time.”

She began working around my mouth, so I stayed quiet. I felt the swell of her breasts against my arm as she leaned over me, and I smelled her light perfume. I resisted the urge to glance down when the neck of her dress gaped slightly. Well, I mostly resisted. I felt like a kid entranced by the thought of seeing his first naked female body.

Finally she finished, wiped my face with a towel, then nodded toward the mirror above the mantel. “Check yourself out.”

One glance at my unadorned features reminded me why I’d grown the beard in the first place. I had to admit, though, that I looked completely different. “You’ve successfully removed that ugly growth,” I said, “and revealed the uglier one beneath it.”

“So the patient will survive?”

I turned to her. “The patient will grow it back as soon as he can. But he appreciates the effort.”

She stepped forward, so close that I reflexively put my hands on her waist. She pressed her hips against me and let my arms take the weight of her upper body. Her hands lightly touched my bare cheeks. “Now that you won’t scratch me up if you kiss me,” she said in a husky, unmistakable voice, “let’s discuss my fee.”

“I thought you worked for the government.”

“I do. But you don’t. You’ve run up quite a tab, what with an office visit and two house calls.”

I felt her breath on my upper lip. Her hands moved down to my chest, and one fingertip ran along my scar. I said, “I certainly wouldn’t want to stiff you.”

She giggled. “Are you sure about that?”

She was so close I could hear her slightly ragged breathing. “
Now
who’s a horny teenager?” I said.

The smile left her face, replaced by the kind of look men dream about inspiring in women like her. She said, “I’m no teenager, sword jockey.”

Then she proved it.

*   *   *

LATER
I looked up at Iris as she sat astride me in bed. The moon was now centered in the window, and its light cast her in pale blue, edged with orange from the dimmed but persistent lamp. Her skin glistened with sweat, and her lips had that delicious puffy quality some women get when they’re aroused. She rolled her hips slowly and bent over me; her breasts slid against my chest. With her eyes closed, I wondered for a moment if she pictured someone else beneath her. Then she smiled down at me and traced her fingers along my hairless cheek. “You clean up nicely.”

“And you dirty up well.”

She laughed and kissed me. I looked past her shoulder at the moon, did some quick calculations, and decided it would reach the pinnacle of the hill within the next half hour. “I have to go soon,” I said into the kiss, which showed no signs of stopping.

“I know,” she agreed, and pulled back enough to look into my eyes. She ran a hand through her sweaty hair. “I should probably mention that this is not characteristic of my normal behavior.”

“Or my normal luck.”

She laughed again and wiped the perspiration from her eyes. She had a slender, trim shape under her clothes that spoke of her active life, and a couple of scars of her own that I intended to ask about someday. “I’ve just never met anyone like you,” she continued. “And I knew I’d regret not doing this if I never saw you again.”

“Really.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement of disbelief; I did not generally inspire unrestrained lust in intelligent, beautiful women.

She nodded. “I know myself, Eddie. I know what I respond to. It’s not the shallow surface, no matter how handsome or wealthy it is. You can believe me or not.”

I rose and put my arms around her waist, feeling the muscles of her back move beneath her skin. “I believe you.” I rolled her onto her back. She went willingly, opened herself to me, and together we pounded out the last of our lust with much noise and effort. We finished with barely enough time for me to dress, pack, and head downstairs. Getting out of that bed was one of the most heroic things I’ve ever done.

We made no awkward promises, except the unspoken one that was in our kiss as I slipped out the door. My last sight of her like that, naked in the moonlight, would stay with me for a long time.

chapter

FOURTEEN

Even indoors my newly bare cheeks felt the night’s chill, and my footsteps, despite my attempt at stealth, sounded loud against the stone.

The rush from the time spent with Iris, which left me feeling as if I could kick the whole world’s ass, had burned itself out by the time I reached the top of the staircase. I paused for a moment and listened for any movement or voices. Only silence reached me. I took the steps two at a time, knowing that I’d come out near the door to the great hall.

My typical luck held. At the bottom I ran smack into a trio of men starting upstairs.

They stared at me. I stared at them. Two of them were pudgy, dressed in expensive clothes a bit too small for their corpulence. The burgundy veins stood out on their noses and ears, marks of their long-term dissipation. I didn’t know them, but they seemed typical wealthy landowners and had no doubt been among the courtiers howling for my entrails for the past two days.

The third I recognized at once as my old pal Ken Spinkley, the Lord Astamore. But his face was as blank as the others.

A long moment passed when no one moved or spoke. “Well?” said the nearest man, who wore amber eye shadow. He humphed with impatience. All three were drunk, and one had to lean against the stairwell door for support.

“I think I’m going to be unwell,” the leaning man said, his voice thick from drink.

“Ladies are unwell,” Eye Shadow said. “Gentlemen vomit.”

“Would you kindly step aside?” Astamore snapped at me, making no effort to hide his annoyance. “We’ve been run out of the great hall.”

Suddenly I realized what was going on: they
didn’t recognize me
. I was clean-shaven and dressed differently, and they were pig-porking drunk.

The leaning man warned, “Watch your shoes, here it comes.”

“Oh, no, get out of the way!” Eye Shadow demanded, and pushed me aside. He grabbed leaning man under the arm and hauled him to his feet. They stumbled up the stairs toward the guest floor, but the retch-and-splash sounds that followed told vividly that they didn’t make it.

“Morons,” Astamore muttered. He looked at me again, and a glimmer of familiarity gleamed behind the drunkenness. “Say … I know you, don’t I?”

It was late, I was on the spot, and I pulled out the only name I could think of at that moment. With immense dignity I tucked my injured hand behind my back and looked imperiously down my nose at him. I let a bird twitter in my voice when I said, “I, sir, am Lord Huckleberry.”

Astamore blinked. “Oh. I’m sorry. Kenneth, Lord Astamore, at your service.”

I pursed my lips in annoyance. “If ‘my service’ includes roughing me up with your boorish gallivanting, then that is true indeed. Perhaps I should have a word with the king, whose company I have just left.”

“No, I assure you, we meant no harm,” Astamore quickly said. Nervous sweat popped out around his hairline. “We were simply looking for the way back to our rooms, there’s certainly no need to bother King Marcus about this. Is there?” He added the last so pitifully I almost laughed in his face.

“Perhaps not.” I swept past him. “But should you inconvenience me again, I shall certainly take measures.” I didn’t see the look on his face as I went through the door into the great hall, but I’m sure it was suitably aghast.

As promised, the room was empty. The only illumination came from moonlight through the narrow windows. I crossed the room to the Tarpolita Hill tapestry and slipped behind it into the designated serving room. I snagged one of the small table lamps, lit it, and went into the darkened corridor that connected the rooms. The drain cover creaked as I lifted it. I climbed down the ladder, paused to pull the grate back into place with my good hand, and dropped with a splash into an inch of running water. I turned the lamp up all the way.

As with everything else in this damned storybook kingdom, the tunnel was ridiculously clean. They must’ve sent people down here once a year to make sure no vegetation or wildlife was able to take hold. The lamplight reflected off the eyes of a lone pair of rats, but it was nothing compared to the horde I’d have found in any castle off this island.

How the hell did Marcus Drake
do
that? This went beyond any sense of duty, into a realm of pride in one’s kingdom that I’d never before seen. Sure, you could order men to clean these tunnels, even force them to do it. But they wouldn’t do it
this
well unless they felt they had a personal stake in it.

I realized, of course, that I knew exactly how Drake did it. He did it the same way he’d got me to take this stupid job.

Annoyed with myself, I looked behind me and saw the vertical bars that covered the cliffside opening. Beyond it stars burned in the clear sky. I turned landward and began to walk. The tunnel’s ceiling was about half an inch shorter than I was, which kept me in a crouch, and the passage sloped gradually upward. Steplike notches lined the floor just below the water, so that if you fell, you wouldn’t slide all the way to the spout. My lower back did not take long to express its disapproval, followed quickly by my knees and, in sympathy, my busted hand.

This distracted me enough that I didn’t spot the body on the tunnel’s floor until I was almost on top of it.

I stopped immediately and took in the scene before moving closer. The body lay on its side, the water trickling around it to continue downhill. Its feet were bare, and ropes tightly bound its ankles. I couldn’t see its face or tell its gender from its wet clothing. A handful of rats waited nearby, disturbed by my light but not frightened off.