Free A Wicked Way to Burn by Margaret Miles Page B

seemed a bit out of sorts.”
    “Lydia never mentioned it to me,” Jonathan murmured.
    “Well. If you’ll permit me?”
    Charlotte was taken by surprise when Mr. Lee picked up her hand and bent to kiss it soundly.
    “Mr. Pratt,” he continued after releasing her, “Mr. Pratt, I believe I will be staying for the remainder of the week, after all; I’ve found rather more of interest than I’d hoped for. If you’d be so good as to keep my room for me?”
    He tipped his hat, twisted his lean body down thenarrow back stairs, and was soon out the side door below them.
    “We get all kinds here, and I try to make everyone feel at home. But there’s something I don’t care for in that one,” Jonathan said uneasily. “He’s too sleek … like a weasel.”
    Charlotte laughed at the rotund landlord’s unflattering observation.
    “Something very supple, I agree,” she replied, picturing for herself a high-swinging monkey in the wilds of South America. “How long has he been here?”
    “Since Sunday night, this time. He’s popped up before—stays a while, and then he’s off again, with a few more butterflies in his bottles, or pickled voles, or whatever it is he’s after at the moment. I can’t say he doesn’t pay me, and he certainly eats well enough, which adds a great deal to my profit. But I feel as if he might bring trouble with him, too, which is something I have very little desire for—especially now, with this other nonsense.”
    And with a pace far more subdued than the one used by Mr. Lee, Jonathan Pratt squeezed his way down the narrow stairway, while Charlotte stepped lightly behind.
    IT WAS ONLY a few more yards to the second reason for her visit to the inn. Charlotte walked briskly back along the front of the red-painted coach house, past the stables, and on to the old log smithy.
    A hammer rang rhythmically near the open doorway, as it bounced on a crescent of glowing iron. Upon seeing her, Nathan plunged the horseshoe into a pail of water where it hissed and steamed, and emerged a midnight blue. The smith set the shoe and tongs aside, and wiped his gritty brow.
    Outside, Charlotte waited under a tall beech, near a thin horse grazing in the shade.
    “Is this,” she called, “Middleton’s mount?”
    “It is. And it would certainly be a piece of luck for the poor animal if Middleton never returned. Looks like he’s been mistreated as a rule, even whipped to bleeding a day or two ago. Brought in tired and hungry, besides. But he’s better now … the cuts are healing quite well. Keeping him out in the air helps.”
    Nathan flicked away a flake of metal from the curling hairs on his broad arm, and stood watching her run a hand over cruel ridges on the animal’s side. There did seem, thought Charlotte, to be a large number of old wounds there.
    “Maybe he was a bad horseman, more used to a carriage.”
    “Whatever his excuse, I consider it a sin to harm a good servant.”
    Charlotte agreed. Nathan, she thought, was a fair man, and not afraid to tell the world what he thought of it.
    “Speaking of servants, have you any idea what caused Mary Frye to faint on the road last night?” she asked.
    “Mary wouldn’t tell me anything, but I expect it has to do with a long string of troubles. You must have heard the talk,” he answered, walking out and squinting up at the clouds.
    “Some. Nathan, you didn’t take Mary out there last night yourself?”
    The smith let out a groan.
    “No, she went out alone. Probably to meet her young Leander—a lad called Gabriel Fortier.”
    “In that case, wouldn’t she have been afraid of being seen by the miller?”
    “They probably planned to walk on the east side of the bridge, down along the river path. Very private afterdark, if you overlook others there with the same idea. As I imagine you might recall.” He grinned suddenly, but a new idea soon sobered him. “I’d guess he wasn’t waiting for her where he promised, because of the trouble over at