Free Let Slip the Dogs of War: A Bard's Bed & Breakfast Mystery #1 by Sara M. Barton

graduate student at the
Sorbonne.” Carefully studying the face of a once-vibrant girl, I
noticed she wasn’t classically beautiful, but certainly very
attractive. Her smile was bright, her eyes sparkling, and in live,
her skin had a rosy glow that seemed to suggest good health. Surely
she had already charmed a number of men with her attributes -- of
that I had no doubt. Celia seemed to have an abundance of
personality. I wondered if that translated to a sense of arrogance
that she was well beyond danger, and if so, had she thrown caution
to the wind while trying to out-manipulate someone like Philippe
Grapon.
    “There is one possibility we failed to take
into account,” Ben said, as he swung back out into traffic. “Celia
may have been working with Philippe as his accomplice.”
    “Stop,” I said, putting a hand to my temple.
“You’re making my head hurt with all the possibilities. The trouble
is we don’t know what she was doing at the Bard’s Bed &
Breakfast or why she was there. All we really know is that she was
dead under the bed in the Ephesus Suite. We don’t know who killed
her, what killed her, or where she was killed.”
    “All true. But we do know that Grapon was
involved in some way, good or bad, and that he was working in
concert with the man who stole Celia’s body.”
    “And we didn’t really see his face, did we?
Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” I wondered,
smoothing out an invisible wrinkle on my lap.
    “Why?”
    “Because we’ll be on alert for Philippe at
the airport, won’t we? What if Mr. X takes advantage of the
situation? What if he kills ‘Mr. Williams’ while we’re busy with
the French philanderer?”
    “The next time you wonder why I married you,
remember this moment,” said my husband, patting my knee with great
affection.
    “I don’t understand.”
    “You have an innate sense of the spy game,
darling, but also a great disdain for it. You don’t take any crap
from me, but I also know you live by your own moral code, so I
don’t have to worry about you plotting and planning behind my back.
That’s not your way. I always knew when I came back to you, you
would be who you are,” he smiled. “One professional spy in the
family is more than enough.”
    “Only I am not who I was, and there are at
least two professional spies in the family if you count Uncle
Edward. Technically, I’m more than just a private citizen, not of
my own volution, and far too involved in the murky world of
espionage for my liking.”
    “And yet, you chose to love a man like
me.”
    “Chose? Hardly. How was having you in my life
a choice?” I demanded. “You were thrust at me like a Christmas
puppy, and no one told me you would foul the carpet or that you
needed housetraining!”
    “Housetraining? I needed housetraining?” Ben
was appalled. “How can you even hint that I was in anyway
uncivilized?”
    “Easy,” I retorted. “If you recall the first
time we met, it’s not as if you were well-behaved.”
    “That wasn’t my fault!”
    “Not your fault that you were stark naked in
the street?
    “She stole my clothes while I was
asleep!”
    “And if you hadn’t been sleeping with her, do
you think you might have remained decently clothed?”
    “I was doing my job! I was distracting a
female intelligence operative, so she couldn’t help her friends
blow up a United States embassy in Africa!”
    “By using sex!” I replied with great disgust.
“You couldn’t play a few hands of rummy? You couldn’t take her to
dinner and regale her with tales of your college days, or just
knock her out and be done with it? Good Lord, what in heaven’s name
would you do without me to keep you honest?”
    “Is that how you see your role in our
marriage? You are the moral compass?”
    “Someone has to be.”
    “So, I am a charity case to you? A bastard
who needs a good scrubbing before the lady of the house will allow
him to enter through the cellar door? ‘Wipe your