Free The Bad Baron's Daughter by Laura London

said aloud. “Pigeons certainly make a more pleasant noise than fighting cocks.” As if it understood her, one of the smaller pigeons walked stiff-legged between her feet and stood there, rubbing its wings against her ankles. “Dear little thing,” she said.
    She remembered then that the pantry had been freshly stocked that day from funds from Linden’s ready pocket. They had bought bread, dried meat, fruit, cheese, and especially for her, he had said, a strange bundle of yellow, smooth-sided tubular fruit, connected together at one end in a way she thought was vastly clever.
    “Bananas,” he had responded to her query, smiling to himself. “From the Canary Islands. No, they aren’t attached for shipment; they grow that way, in bunches. Little monkeys eat them in the jungle, they say.”
    So now I’m going to eat monkey food, she thought. Katie looked doubtfully at the oblong yellow fruit. If only there was a monkey around to tell her how to eat it. She brought it out of the pantry into the little kitchen, took a knife from the rack and cut it in half. She found it was filled with a delightfully scented white fiber. Possessed by a culinary brainstorm, Katie sliced two pieces of bread and squeezed both halves of the banana out onto them, carefully daubing the fruit around to make sure it was evenly distributed. She cut two pieces of cheese and laid them on top, poured a sparing glass of white wine and carried the snack upstairs. Katie changed into a comfortable old nightdress, and sat crosslegged in a giant overstuffed armchair that she pulled before the open French doors of the balcony. And there she had a royal feast, entertained by the flutterings of the pigeons and watching the comings and goings of the finely dressed passersby. It seemed everyone was going to a party somewhere, and she was having a party herself. The shadows grew longer and blacker, spreading across the street until they had diffused the sunset into darkness. The swallows and bats began to dart once again. Katie put aside her plate, having reduced the mongrel sandwich to a small pile of crumbs, and dozed contentedly.
    She woke with a start some time later, thinking she had heard a knock on the door downstairs. It had been so real, so distinct; three sharp raps. Perhaps she had dreamed it. Her eyes were wide in the darkened room as she listened. Nothing. She closed her eyes again and tried to return to sleep. Seconds, or minutes later, it came again, the triple knocking.
    Katie lifted herself slowly from the chair and winced as it squeaked beneath her. The dark outline of the key Lord Linden had left her was barely visible against the purplewood veneer of the small tier table in the corner. She reached out and touched it in passing, feeling its reassuring metallic coldness; then she crept down the carpeted stairway.
    The doorknob was being rattled and turned by an unseen hand.
    “Katie,” came a sepulchral whisper from the other side of the two-inch oak door. It was a voice she had never heard before, a disembodied, menacing voice that drew out her name as if it would pull her soul from her body. Involuntarily, she backed from the door. “Open the door, Katie.”
    She backtracked up the stairs, staring mesmerized at the twisting doorknob. Her mind raced frantically, attempting to attach a face, an identity, to that ghostly whisper. Linden had his own key. Anyone visiting Linden wouldn’t know her name. If it were Zack, wouldn’t he identify himself outright? Perhaps the voice had no face. The rattling of the doorknob ceased and Katie halted stiffly, poised in uncertainty, one hand clamped tightly on the railing. Seconds slipped into moments and breath returned to her constricted throat.
    The French doors were open upstairs! A picture sparked into her mind of a now threatening breeze, gaining entrance to ruffle uninhibited through the exit to the balcony. Katie turned and ran up the stairs, intending to slam the doors. She rushed into