Free Mistaken Identity (Saved By Desire 3) by Rebecca King

mouth to call him back but suspected he would just ignore her. She turned toward the meat and glared at it accusingly before she turned away. If she had the will, she would throw the wretched thing into the fire, but she just couldn’t bring herself to let good food go to waste. It was something she could never afford to purchase.
    Once it was cooked and eaten, who was to say where it had been found?
    “You could also put the pheasant into a stew,” she whispered.
    If she spun out the finances a little more this week and bought a pheasant from the market on Thursday, then she could feed everyone one or two meals, get rid of the other pheasants in the process, and nobody needs ever know anything untoward had happened.
    “If only life is ever that simple,” she whispered.
    Quickly closing up the kitchen, she ignored her aching head and blew out the candle. Once the bolt on the front door was across, she closed the shutters and made her way to the back of the house.
    She got half way up the stairs when a rapid series of knocks rapped loudly on the door. Jess turned to study the wood. She knew who it was. There was only one person in the village – well, two – who had no regard for respect or decency, and would think nothing of calling by at this ungodly hour.
    As if to reiterate her point, the clock on the mantle in the study chimed eleven times.
    “Well, you can go to Hell,” she whispered with a sniff and ignored the second series of thumps as she climbed the stairs to her new bedroom.
    Downstairs, a man dressed entirely in black watched her disappear out of sight at the top of the stairs. The sight of her rounded curves sashaying this way and that as she moseyed on up to bed was mesmerising, and had a predictable impact on his libido. Still, there was no time for that now. Peering through a crack in the shutter, he watched the magistrate step backwards to look up at the front façade of the house. Whatever he wanted, the scowl on his face warned of dire consequences for someone inside. It was clear that he wasn’t going to gain access to this house tonight, and that clearly didn’t sit well with the magistrate.
    The man’s smile was mirthless.
    The landlady’s hatred of what farcically constituted as the authorities around these parts worked in his favour as well, but she would never know it. As long as she continued to thwart Lloyd’s rather determined efforts to pry into the lives of the guests, then he would remain a paying guest. Should the magistrate step inside, and proceed to pester anybody for details about why they were there then he would have to take matters into his hands.
    If someone ended up dead then so be it.
    For now, he watched Carruthers disappear around the side of the house. He knew the landlady was a stickler for locking up the house at night. The magistrate wouldn’t get inside, no matter how hard he tried.
    To the sounds of murmured conversation outside, the man quietly left the study and made his way up to his room. He had no intention of going to bed because he had work to do. He just needed to wait for the landlady to go to sleep, and the magistrate to leave the area.
    Still fully dressed, Jess lay on the bed and listened to the low rumble of conversation below her window. The dull rap of someone knocking on what she suspected was the back door could now be heard. Thankfully, none of the guests made any attempt to answer it. Neither did Ben, but she wasn’t surprised about that. He had rather a lot to keep a secret right now. Not least of which was the rather juicy piece of beef now resting on the fireplace.
    Quickly undressing, she slid beneath the covers and wriggled around on the unfamiliar bed until she found a comfortable spot. When she did, she found that sleep still eluded her. She was so tired that she could barely see straight but, now that she was lying down, and the house was quiet, her mind began to churn over all of the worries, doubts, fears, and problems, that faced