LITMIR.BIZ

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keep from laughing. Robert Alden was many things—witty, clever, and damnably handsome. Gentlemanly wasn’t one of them.

      This was just another quarrel—over payment to a Winchester goose. Yet somehow she still sensed there was more to it. Something else was happening underneath this common, everyday disagreement.

      She opened her mouth to argue, turning back to Rob, but just then that strange tension snapped and chaos broke free in the quiet morning. With an echoing shout, the bear-man lunged at Rob, all flailing arms and flashing blades, faster than she could have imagined possible.

      His men, half-hidden in the shadows, tumbled after him, shouting, and everything threatened to hurtle over into a full-blown battle. Anna pressed herself back against the wall.

      But she had underestimated Rob. Debauched he might look, yet the long night had lost him none of his actor’s grace. Swift as the tiger in the Queen’s menagerie, he sidestepped his attacker, reaching out to grab his arm. Using the man’s bulk against him, Rob flipped him to the ground. A brittle snap rang through the air, causing the bear-man’s minions to freeze in place as he howled in agony.

      Rob gestured to them with his blade. ‘Who is next, then?’ he called.

      Predictably, no one took that offer. They scooped up their fallen leader and ran away, the sobbing whore reluctantly following them. The sudden explosion of violence receded as fast as it had come.

      ‘I hope you are content now,’ Anna murmured.

      Rob leaned his palm against the wall near her head, laughing. ‘I am, rather. They ran like the gutter rats they are. Didn’t you find it amusing, Mistress Barrett?’

      ‘No, I did not. I think …’ Then she saw it. The smear of blood on his bared chest was a thicker, brighter red, staining his rumpled shirt. ‘You’re hurt!’

      She reached out to touch him, but he drew away with a hiss. ‘‘Tis a scratch,’ he said.

      ‘A scratch can lead to the churchyard if it’s not seen to,’ she protested. ‘I am the daughter of Tom Alwick, remember? I’m certainly no stranger to wounds. Please, let me see.’

      He glanced past her at the gawping actors, reluctant to lose their excitement so fast. ‘Not here,’ he muttered.

      ‘What? Do you fear having your modesty offended? Fine, we can go to the tiring-house.’

      ‘I will happily shed my garments for you, Mistress Barrett. You need only ask …’ Suddenly Rob swayed, his bronzed face ashen.

      Anna caught him against her, her arm around his lean waist, as alarm shot through her. Robert Alden was never pale. Something troubling indeed must have happened in the night.

      ‘Rob, what is it?’ she gasped.

      ‘No one must know,’ he said roughly, his breath stirring the curls at her temple as he leaned against her.

      Know what? ‘I will not let them,’ she whispered. ‘Come inside with me now, and all will be well.’

      If only she could believe that herself.

       Chapter Two

      Anna led Rob through the twisting maze of corridors behind the stage of the White Heron. It was eerily silent there, with Rob’s breath echoing off the rough wooden walls. The smell of dust, face paint and blood was thick in her throat, and Rob’s body was too warm as he leaned on her shoulder—as if he had a fever.

      Despite her efforts not to worry, Anna couldn’t help it. All her life, with her father and her husband, and now with her father again, she had lived among men of hot and unpredictable tempers. Fights and feuds, duels, even sudden and violent death, were things all too commonplace in the streets of Southwark and Bankside. She had learned the hard lessons of dealing with such men.

      But Rob Alden—despite his own quick temper, he had always seemed above such things, able to win a brawl with a quick flick of his sword and a careless laugh. He was known and feared in this world. Men said his smile hid a lethal heart, and they avoided him when they could. Anna had seen this time and again, and puzzled over it. Rob walked through life as if enchanted. Unlike her own existence.

      Had the enchantment worn away?

      She pushed away that cold, clammy fear and led him into the deserted tiring-house behind the stage. Chests full of costumes and properties were stacked along the walls, and a false cannon gleamed in a dark corner. Anna pushed aside a pile of blunted rapiers and made Rob sit down on a scarred old clothes chest.

      He slowly lowered himself to the makeshift seat, watching her warily. There was no hint of his carefree laughter, his constant sunny flirtation. He looked older, harder, the sharp, sculpted angles of his handsome face cast in shadows. How had she never noticed that coldness before?

      It made her even more cautious of him—of the threat his good looks posed to her and her hard-won peace.

      ‘What happened?’ she said. She turned away from the steady, piercing glow of his eyes and dug out her basket from a cupboard. She always kept bandages and salves nearby for these all-too-frequent moments. There were always injuries in the theatre.

      ‘You saw for yourself,’ Rob said. His voice was as hard as his expression, with no hint of the light humour he usually used to cloak his true self.

      Whatever Rob Alden’s true self might be. Anna wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

      ‘A quarrel over a whore?’ Anna said.

      ‘Aye. It happens all the time, alas.’

      ‘Indeed, it does.’ Her father was the landlord of brothels. She knew what went on behind those doors, and actors were the worst sort of trouble there. Yet she couldn’t shake away the sense that something more was happening here.

      She watched Rob as he pulled his shirt off over his head. He winced as the cloth brushed over his shoulder, and Anna could see why. A long gash arced over his upper ribs into the angle of his shoulder—a jagged red line that barely missed his heart. It was crusted over with dried blood, but some fresh, redder liquid still seeped out onto his smooth burnished skin.

      There were older scars, as well—stark white reminders of other fights and wounds that marred his perfect beauty, making Anna remember the daily danger of this life.

      She dampened a clean cloth and carefully dabbed at the new wound. She breathed shallowly, slowly, and kept her expression bland and calm. She had learned a thing or two about artifice from working around actors. Nothing should ever be what it seemed.

      ‘A quarrel over payment?’ she asked as she lightly sponged away the dried blood to examine the depth of the wound.

      His breath roughened but he didn’t move away from her. He just watched her with that steady, unreadable look on his face, with those blue eyes that seemed to see so much yet give nothing away.

      Anna slowly raised her gaze to meet his. She saw why the bawds fought over him as they did. He was the last sort of man she needed in her life, but he was a rare specimen of manhood with that face, and that lean, strong body displayed before her now. He was a danger just by simply being himself, and whatever it was he kept so well hidden only made him more so.

      She dropped her attention back to the work of cleaning the wound. The coppery tang of blood was a timely reminder.

      ‘Aye,’ he answered after a long, heavy pause. ‘Her keeper tried to charge me more than agreed on after we were done. Something I’m sure your esteemed father would never do in one of his houses.’

      Was that sarcasm in his voice? Anna nearly laughed. She wouldn’t put anything past her father and his business practices. He was such an old rogue. But not even he would cheat Robert Alden.

      And neither would anyone else in Southwark. Too many had felt the chill of Rob’s dagger, and ever since he’d been tossed into Bridewell Prison for a short spell after a fatal duel he

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