Free Patrica Rice by Mad Marias Daughter Page A

two.”
    It took Daphne a moment to realize this plea came from a young boy a few yards away. A young man, she amended as she recognized the tattered remnants of his uniform.
    “Aye, and how ye expect to do that?” The woman’s voice asked scornfully. “Be gone with ye now. This is a poor place. We have naught for the likes of ye.”
    The thin young man turned away, and it was then Daphne realized one sleeve of his jacket blew in the breeze. Anger raged hot and cold through her. Perhaps she ought to feel pity or sorrow for the lad’s plight, but she only felt fury at the villager’s treatment of someone who honestly wished to work despite his infirmity. Evan Griffin’s words came back to mock her, but she refused to let him have the right of it.
    Before she could climb down from the cart, she noticed another man stepping from the tavern door. She tried to see the reason for his uneven gait, fearing to become embroiled with a drunkard this early in the day. But the sound of his wooden leg on the cobbles dispelled that notion. She garnered her narrow skirt in one hand and stepped out.
    “I told ye, lad, there’s none to be had in these parts. Come with me, and I’ll see you fed, leastways.” The peg-legged man raised his hand to the young boy’s shoulder, but his words came to a sudden halt as Daphne bore down on him.
    Wearing a fetching green spencer and straw hat with matching ribbons streaming behind, the delicate eyelet overskirt of her walking gown catching and blowing in the wind to reveal a frail muslin gown and kid shoes, the lady hurrying toward them did not appear the fire-breathing dragon that she obviously thought herself. The two men gaped at this vision of loveliness, hastily reached to doff their hats, and stared in open-mouthed astonishment when she stopped before them.
    “You are looking for work, sir?” Daphne snapped crisply, addressing the younger man while holding on to her straw hat in the brisk breeze.
    “Yes, mum, milady,” the lad answered nervously.
    “Then come with me. We will find you work.” She started down the street, but the older man’s polite cough caused her to halt and raise a delicate eyebrow. “Yes?”
    “Perhaps you ain’t noticed, milady, but he ain’t got but one arm. You might want to ...”
    Daphne’s stare froze him into silence. “And you have but one foot and you still walk, do you not? I do not believe it is necessary to state the obvious. The gentleman wishes to work. It is up to him to devise a means of doing it.’’
    She turned to the lad who could not be older than herself, perhaps even younger. “If you are asked to do something that you do not feel capable of doing, you must speak out. It is very hard to do, I know from experience, but you surely must have more courage than I. You have been a soldier. If you can face cannonballs, you can face a blustery squire. Do you wish to come with me or go live with those other layabouts in the woods?” She sent a disdainful glare to the unbathed scoundrel with the wooden leg.
    Rhys pursed a silent whistle. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, this was the termagant who had turned his captain into a haunted ghost of himself. No other lady in town would have knowledge of the handful of miscreants living off the land, nor would they have spoken of having experience in facing their limitations if Evan’s observation about her lameness were true.
    Besides, only a lady as lovely as this could have turned the captain’s head so easily, and he hadn’t seen another like her, ever. By the devil, he could easily understand Evan’s problem, but the solution wasn’t so easily discovered.
    “If you’re handing out jobs, miss,” Rhys hurriedly replied, “I’m as willing as any man to work. There’s just not many as takes to my looks.”
    Daphne could see why. Coming out of the tavern in those disgraceful clothes with a week’s unshaven beard, he appeared no better than a rum-soaked old reprobate, but she should not