Read Online Jail Bait by Marilyn Todd - Free Book Online Page B

trespassing.’
    Also?
    ‘You know, this man Tuder—’ he shrugged expressively ‘—for a banker, he have very good taste. Maybe I show you around? The villa, the grounds. You wish to see, yes?’
    Above the hum of conversation from the barber’s came the sound of iron scissors snipping at hair, bronze knives being stropped, the sizzle of curling tongs heated in charcoals and whetstones being lubricated by spitting.
    ‘I wish to see, no.’
    The Spaniard grunted, and the grunt could have meant anything.
    Funny, but despite the lane reeking with the wolf’s grease used to cure baldness, with steam and the dust from the scrape of their stools, Claudia could smell only a subtle blend of woodshavings and pine…
    ‘I come anyway,’ he insisted. ‘Three hours from now. I wait by the jetty and—’ he cut short her protest with a flash of white teeth ‘—I let you row, if you want.’
    Claudia willed her feet to start walking, because the Spaniard made no effort to prise himself away from the wall.
    ‘You know,’ he was addressing her retreating back—so she might have misheard, what with the babble of gossip from inside the barber’s and a chariot rattling past but it sounded for all the world as though he said, ‘you look just as good with your clothes on.’
    Accompanied, perhaps, by a chuckle.
    *
    Who was he? Her mind whirling like a mill-race, Claudia elbowed her way down the street, careless of a packmule loaded with grain. The owner cursed roundly as he bent to scoop up the trail of spilled corn, but Claudia didn’t hear. Who the hell was the stranger who, with the utmost calm and composure, circled a blood-crazed bear with a spear in its eye? The same man who issues veiled warnings against trespassers on the island, yet conversely offers to show her around? Who mocks her state of near nudity without enquiring as to her health after so narrow an escape?
    Who was the stranger who, let’s be honest, had strip-searched her soul yesterday?
    A picture flashed into her mind. Of him standing at the edge of the clearing, one shoulder bare as he leaned on his lance. Today he wore a tunic of watercress green and the gold had not been restricted to the hem, but was embroidered into oak leaves and acorns. What job, she wondered, swerving past a pedlar, what job on Tuder’s estate would befit a man of twenty-five, twenty-six with broad shoulders and strong, corded muscles? She exchanged five sesterces for an ostrich-feather fan from the pedlar. Tuder had a wife, had he not? Lais, someone said her name was. Closer to sixty than fifty they said. Would Lais have need of a slave with smouldering good looks? To explain the gold thread in his cloth?
    Pausing to drink from a fountain, Claudia decided that Lais would be living dangerously were that the case—the Emperor’s reforms were exacting in the extreme! Nowadays, not only a cuckolded husband had the right to instigate a divorce against an adulterous wife. Recent legislation gave others an incentive to shop her, because if the husband, for whatever motive, decided against prosecution, the informant himself could indict—with the added inducement that, should the erring wife be proved guilty, said accuser could claim half her dowry.
    Bound by the stifling, almost incestuous, isolation of an island, petty jealousies would escalate, imaginary scores would need settling. Lais and her lover would need to watch out.
    Assuming, of course, the supposition was correct. Claudia trickled lukewarm water from the fountain over her face. There might be a perfectly innocent explanation for all this. Lais, for instance, could turn out to be a nagging shrew, a middle-aged cripple or some kissy socialite. Who knows, she might be all three, with not a thought to romancing some drop-dead sexy slave which, if the affair came to light, could result in her being cast out and sold into slavery, and for him would mean certain death.
    Was he worth it? Claudia wondered. Was the Spaniard worth