Read Online The Princess and the Pauper by Alexandra Benedict - Free Book Online Page B

a
shepherd, their master had one regular visitor, a male friend, and
no other guests. Gifts and invitations poured through the door, but
Rees ignored them all.
    He wanted to focus on his music, she
assumed, but still, why maintain a vacant house? And one so large?
A small manor in the country would be more suitable for a
recluse.
    Her footfalls echoed through the lonely
passages. She shivered and rubbed her arms, feeling like a ghost.
She would live as one in the unfurnished house, visit Rees every
night, like a haunting, and perform. But why? What did he want from
her? The music?
    Her walk had failed to cure her restless
heart. If anything, she was even more perturbed than when she’d
first left his room.
    Emily mounted the stairs and explored the
remaining bedrooms. At the end of her search, she discovered a
chamber with an en-suite and balcony, papered in more gaudy
patterns. She envisioned the space without the ornamental
trappings, the walls stripped of paisleys and papered instead in a
warm butter yellow, the bed alcove draped in rose fabric. This, she
supposed, would be her own room.
    She wouldn’t have an apartment of her own.
She couldn’t press for a flat in a respectable part of town when
the mansion was so spacious and she hadn’t a reputation to protect
anymore. Still, she could fulfill her strange duty and play for
Rees every night if she had her own abode. She could visit him. Or
he could visit her. She needn’t live underfoot when he so obviously
wanted a sequestered life . . . unless he sheltered her for more
intimate reasons.
    Her breath hitched and her heart swelled
with longing, and perhaps a bit of hope, dangerous as that might
be. She yearned for his camaraderie again. She didn’t want to live
with him in the deserted house, like two lost souls. She wanted to
believe he still cared for her, that she wasn’t just a “guest” in
his house, even if he denied it. But how to be sure? A small voice
whispered— music .
    Of course, music. A musician had to open
his heart to play, but an audience had to open its heart to hear.
And she knew just the melody to play to open Rees’s heart, to learn
the truth about his feelings for her . . . and if there was a
second chance for friendship.
    ~ * ~
    Rain pattered against the window
like fingertips tapping glass. The worst of the storm had washed over the city
and breaks in the clouds had allowed the moon’s light to cast its
glow—a greenish glow over a festering metropolis.
    Grey looked away from his
reflection in the pane of glass and removed the
let ter from
his trouser pocket. A chronological summary of Wright’s activities
during the last year of his life had been itemized and delivered by
Mr. Smith, who, it seemed, had brain as well as brawn.
    More fastidious details were to
follow in a day or two, but the rundown revealed a troubling turn of
events eight months after Grey had left the household. Emily had
been engaged at the time, and all seemed well, until a blundered
business deal marked the rapid decline of Wright’s
fortune.
    Grey walked across the room and turned
down the gas lights, leaving only the oil lamp burning on the
bedside table. He approached the bed and stretched out over the
mattress, tucking an arm under his head.
    A n unbidden memory came to mind—a small
hand in his, slipping away. He could still hear Emily’s bare toes
frantically scraping the roof tiles. He could still see the terror
in her wide brown eyes as she nearly plummeted to her death. Ten
years later, that “nearly” still spurred his pulse.
    He never imagined it would be her mighty
father who’d fall in the end. But the unthinkable had occurred, and
Grey studied the handwritten lines for the sinister secret. The
evidence was too vague, though, and since Emily refused to confess
what had really happened to her doting papa, Grey would have to
keep digging for the truth.
    A rap at the door.
    He crushed the paper and stuffed it under
his pillow just as Emily entered