Read Online Witches Incorporated by K.E. Mills - Free Book Online Page B

dropped to the edge of her bed and pulled the dressing gown more tightly round her ribs. “Yes, but you’re not Monk. He’s a thaumaturgical genius.”
    “He’s a thaumaturgical genius today,” said Reg, looking down her beak. “By this time tomorrow he could be a nasty stain on the carpet.”
    “Oh,
Reg
.” If there’d been a slipper handy she would’ve thrown it. “Do
stop
being so
melodramatic
.”
    “Only if you get dressed,” said Reg. “You’ll catch your death sitting about the place half-naked and if you think
I’m
going to be mopping your fevered brow you’ve sadly misread the situation.”
    “Oh, all
right
,” she groaned, and hunted up some clean tweed trews and a not-too-wrinkled white shirt, her everyday attire of choice. Even in modern Ottosland such a masculine outfit raised eyebrows, but she was loath to abandon it for skirts and dresses. Baggy trousers were comfortable. During her hard-fought campaign to avoid a royal marriage of convenience she’d first grown accustomed to having the shape of her legs more-or-less on show, and then positively attached to the habit of walking fast without tripping over flounces.
    And the ruder Reg got about princesses who couldn’t tell if they were Martha or Arthur the more determined she became never to dress like a girl again.
    Ignoring the wretched bird’s eloquent stare and heavy sighs, she swapped nightwear for daywear, wrestled her rat’s-nest hair into submission with a brush and tidied it into a long plait. Then she made her way down the four flights of rickety stairs to the outside convenience in the building’s rear courtyard, checked for spiders, twice, washed her hands afterwards under the recalcitrant water pump—Saint Snodgrass, how she missed the palace’s plumbing—and trudged all the way back upstairs to face a breakfast of two cold hard-boiled eggs left over from last night’s supper. Without salt or pepper, because she’d used up the dregs yesterday.
    Of course if she’d followed Bibbie’s example and taken a room at Mistress Mossop’s Boarding House for Refined Young Ladies, she’d be eating a hot breakfast in style right about now. Fresh eggs scrambled in butter, juicy fat sausages, toast and marmalade, sweet, creamy coffee…
    But she couldn’t do it. Partly because of the money—she was determined not to be a drain on Rupert’s strained royal purse—and partly because she wasn’t certain she could face hordes of Refined Young Ladies, even if one of them
was
Emmerabiblia Markham… the first real friend of the female persuasion she’d ever made.
    Reg didn’t count.
    “So, what’s the plan for today, then?” the bird enquired, perched on the bedrail. “Seeing as how we’ve got no clients there’s an awful lot of time to fill between now and sunset.”
    Melissande looked up from sweeping bits of eggshell into the bedsit’s tiny rubbish pail. “And you think I need reminding of that yet
again
because…”
    “No point getting snippy with me, ducky,” said Reg, shrugging. “We’re floundering and that’s all there is to it.”
    “We are not
floundering
,” she retorted. “We are experiencing a temporary dearth of clients. It’s not the same thing at all.”
    “Well, if you’d just make more of the fact that
you’re
a princess and your brother’s a
king
, madam, we’d have so many clients we’d be beating them off with a stick!”
    “How many times do I have to say it, Reg?” Melissande demanded, glaring. “I left New Ottosland so I could
stop
being a princess. I’m
not
going to—to
flaunt
myself in Ottish society just so we can—”
    Reg rattled her tail feathers. “Flaunt? Flaunt? Who said anything about flaunt?
I
never said you should
flaunt
. But you could wear a regal dress and your mother’s tiara, couldn’t you, and let the local snobs draw their own conclusions? Drop them a hint, where’s the harm in that?”
    “Oh,
Reg
!”
    “Don’t you
Oh, Reg
me!” said Reg crossly.