Lois Greiman Read Free Page B

and a meaner fist. Or so she’d been told, though thus far she’d managed to stay clear of the latter.
    She glanced through the open doorway to the common room beyond. “Place is packed tight as a oyster,” she said, and fiddled busily with her apron strings, though they were already secured in place. “Last autumn’s brew was a right hummer, aye?”
    He glared at her, but harrumphed in something akin to good nature. He took pride in his beer, which he made himself. Fig might be as mean as an adder and a skinflint to boot, but he had a way of brewing that kept his patrons coming back. It was one of the reasons Megs had taken this job, for although Fig kept his secrets to himself, she was certain she could learn them. Secrets could only last so long. She knew that as truth. A truth that kept her mobile. Never stay in one place too long. Never be who they think you are.
    “Take care of them gents,” Fig ordered, and she hurried to do just that.
    The common room wasn’t as busy as she had implied, but it was crowded enough. She squeezed past a pair of farmers who argued boisterously about the weight of a gargantuan boar and found the table with the laughing lords from Portshaven. They were easy enough to spot in the rough room. Like pansies set amidst a field of sweet thistle.
    “What’ll y’ be ’avin’ this eve, gents?” she asked.
    There were five of them. Dressed to kill in cutaway coats and pantaloons, they turned to her one by one, but they saw what she wanted them to see, and tonight she wanted them to see naught but a much-abused maid in a brown woolen gown, two sizes too large and buttoned up tight to her chin. The garment had gone out of fashion sometime around Attila the Hun’s era, and as far as she knew her droopy mobcap had never exactly been the rage. But the costume served her purposes well enough—generally. Just now, however, the gentlemen were eyeing her breasts like hounds might watch mutton chops, though the gown hung like a gunnysack from her shoulders. She couldn’t help but wonder how they could even tell if she had breasts. Perhaps they were more imaginative than she’d thought. But she rather doubted it.
    “Gentlemen?” she said again.
    A gawky fellow with huge ears whispered something to his chum, and they snickered together. She refrained from reaching across the table and knocking their heads together, but she did not refrain from noticing that his vest pocket bulged the slightest amount. Neither did she stop herself from storing that information away for later consideration.
    “What’s tasty?” asked the fellow nearest her, and flicked an elegant hand in her direction. “Besides you?”
    The sniggers grew louder. Apparently they’d tested someone else’s brew before coming to the Lion. Either that or theywere just irresistibly witty and not averse to haggard women with black eyes.
    “The beer’s good,” she said, then smiled. “And the mutton.”
    They placed their orders without undue resistance and settled back to their foolish banter, leaving Megan to hurry into the kitchen with their orders. She delivered their meals in a moment and pressed on to the table nearest the door.
    The man there was alone. He was dressed in a rough woolen shirt and a smithy’s leather apron. One shoulder rested wearily against the wall. A weathered hat shadowed his face, giving little clues to his thoughts, but he had the large, sun-darkened hands of a working man.
    Megan offered a smile, not as bright as the one for the gentlemen, but honest. “What’ll y’ be ’avin’ tonight, love?”
    He glanced up as if disturbed from his reverie. “’Ow’s your Scotch?” His voice was deep and burred. She liked the sound of it. An honest man’s voice.
    “Watered down,” she said. “And overpriced.”
    Even from beneath the hat, she thought she sensed his surprise. And there was something about the way he moved that little bit that made her wonder if he weren’t perhaps, a bit younger