Dream Boat Read Free Page B

however, with sufficient funds to silence any squawks of protest. No one could ever say for sure whether Flavia was miserable by constitution or whether being unwanted had rubbed off on her somehow, but by all accounts, she'd
    adopted an unlovable nature with uncharacteristic alacrity -scowling when she should have chortled, sulking when it came to playing games - so that when Claudia entered the scene, a scant five years back, the pattern was set like cement.
    Flavia was miserable. This made Marcellus miserable. Which in turn made Julia even more miserable than she already had been.
    Oh, Flavia, couldn't you have just tried? Met them, if not in the middle, then at least one third of the way? Recently, Claudia thought she'd actually seen a chink in the girl's armour. Admittedly, the visit had not been a social one -Flavia had come to whinge about her allowance being severed - but, like most teenage girls, she had become obsessed with her appearance of late and in one candid moment blurted out, 'I hate the way I look!'
    'Did I tell her to stop looking? Drusilla, I did not.' Neither did Claudia tell the girl that the only person who could help her appearance was herself. 'With commendable patience, I pointed out that spots clear naturally, excess weight can be shed and that a good seamstress could work miracles on those rounded shoulders.'
    However, before she'd even broached the miracles of cosmetics, Flavia had snorted, 'You just don't understand!' and flounced out, slamming the door in her wake.
    'Mrrow.'
    'Some of her behaviour is understandable, I grant you.' Claudia stripped the flesh off a quail for the cat. 'Gaius never made a secret of his irritation with his daughter.' Which would leave deep scars on even the hardest little nut! 'But you'd have thought Julia and Marcellus, being childless, might have been more receptive to the love of a toddler.'
    Instead, Flavia had been given free rein to hone the only skill she possessed, namely being as perverse as she was able, and dear lord, was that girl able! Julia had grown more sour and more frigid with every year that passed, the family's only salvation lay in marrying Flavia off. Only here she had proved her claim to title of The Most Contrary Little
    Madam in the Universe. She had categorically refused all suitors!
    'No, let's be fair, poppet. More often than not, she repelled them.' Which wasn't the same thing at all!
    For a brief, glorious moment, standing in the stillness of her shuttered bedroom, Claudia pictured the final denouement in the kidnappers' plan. That exquisite moment when the gang collected the ransom. They would gather round and slowly lift the lid of the money box. Shock! In place of a pile of shiny gold coins, they'd see only air. And at the bottom, a note which read 'Keep the bitch. We've had enough.'
    Ah, well. A girl can dream . . .
    Since the altercation in the street had now been resolved, dispersing with it the hucksters, whores and pickpockets, Claudia flung open the shutters again and stepped out on to her balcony. Shit. In the half hour since she'd retreated, a breeze had sprung up from the coast, thick and gummy, the sort which carries with it flies and biting insects, malaria and plague. Terrific! Any more surprises?
    Below, black-clad undertakers moving, for delicacy's sake, under cover of darkness carried away a corpse on a stretcher. In the flickering light of the torch-bearers, she recognised the baker's mother, who must have been ninety if she was a day, and from her balcony Claudia saluted a final farewell. That's the way to go, she thought. Strong of body, clear of mind and knocking on a hundred. Not fifteen, trussed up like a chicken to be bought and sold as cheaply as a sack of sorrel leaves.
    Long after the undertakers had wound their way down the hill, Claudia stared after them, and when the herald called out the hour, she could not be sure whether it was two or three that he called. Maybe