Read By Design for Free Online Page B

shock. “That hurts!”
    “It becomes a good hurt. Stay still.”
    She accepted it, and then welcomed it. Slowly the knots softened and she grew limp. Her head lolled on her knees.
    It probably would help her legs, too. And her arms. She would never permit that, but an image of it stuck in hishead. He saw her lying naked on a bed while he slowly worked his hands over her entire body.
    “This is a fine house,” she said, to distract them both, as if she guessed his thoughts. “Wider than most in the city.”
    “Too wide for one person, is what you mean. I came into some money several years ago, and put it in land as most do. I built the house with an eye to selling it.”
    “But you did not?”
    “I will someday, I expect. But there is a well, which is convenient, and a good-size garden where I can work. I have grown accustomed to both luxuries. And it is the first city house that I planned, so I have an affection for it.”
    She raised her head and peered around the kitchen more alertly. “You built it yourself?”
    “The stonework.”
    “You designed it, too? Are you a builder?”
    “I assisted a master builder for a few years, and began serving as one myself around the time I bought this prop erty.”
    She twisted to see him. It pained her enough that she grimaced, but that did not stop her. Nor did the fact that her crossed arms hardly covered her breasts effectively. “Is that how you serve them? Mortimer and the Queen? As a master builder?”
    Her blue eyes flashed with anger. She used the accusa tory tone she had adopted when he walked her to the city gate three days before.
    “It is how I serve the crown.”
    “So you say, but it is really them.”
    “For now, it looks like it is.”
    “They spend the realm's wealth on their luxuries. Have you helped them in their extravagance?”
    “There are many builders to the crown. My projects have been few, and not very extravagant at all.”
    “But you hope for more and better ones.”
    Her belligerent goading irritated him. “It is my craft and my skill and how I eat. Aye, I hope for better ones.”
    She was picking at something that he resented her broaching. Bad enough that he debated his choices in his heart. He did not need this woman forcing them into words.
    She did not retreat. “You said that day that you do not work on their castle walls, but one day you will be asked to, won't you? Not to carve tracery, but to plan and design the keeps and the fortifications. When Mortimer steals an es tate, he calls one of his builders to come and improve the defenses that failed in his assault. One day that builder will be you, won't it?”
    “I doubt that. I am not one of his favorites.”
    “You tell yourself that, but you know the day will come. You are young for a master builder. That means that you are more skilled than most. When it comes to the walls that hold up power, skill is what matters.”
    “You do not know what you are talking about. Skill is rarely all that matters in this world.”
    She glanced with scorn over his face and body. “I think that you have already made your choice, in your heart. You will do whatever is asked if the coin is right, and say that you only further your craft. You will probably tell yourself that it doesn't matter, that it is not one man's act that makes the injustice continue.”
    He resented like hell that knowing glance. A little fury whirled in his head. “If I tell myself that, it will be because it is true. I am a mason, woman, not a knight or baron. Masons build structures. Others build the power and the world.”
    “Masons are like the men who make siege machines.
    They may not lift a sword, but there can be no war, and no power, without them.”
    “You have an unholy anger about something far above you. Like all ignorant people, you see the world too sim ply, and voice stupid opinions too boldly.”
    “I am not so ignorant and stupid that I do not know a lackey when I see one.”
    Lackey . “What you