Read Trouble in Disguise: 5 (Eclipse Heat) for Free Online Page B

Crispin, the owner of a card hell down the street, had spent the evening upstairs. Lydia had walked with him down the steps as if they’d been together. She’d stood watching as he departed, making certain that he was actually going.
    Miri used her formal attire and manner to sustain her role as the gentleman butler. She exhibited a half bow when admitting clients and a tilt of the head when she bade them good night. It had worked and she’d had no problem remaining anonymous and ignored. However, when Miri inclined her head at Crispin, he lunged and tried to grab Calvin’s cods.
    Miri had been opening the door for the bastard when suddenly he had her pinned against it, sliding his hand down her front toward her privates. She’d caught his wrist before the grope was completed and grabbed his crotch instead. He was shorter than her by a head and she had no trouble subduing him.
    Squeezing his very real balls, she’d more or less lifted him by his shoulder and half dragged, half backed him to the sidewalk. Once there, she’d made a show of picking him up and tossing him into the street.
    When he’d landed, he’d gone for the fancy gun he kept hidden. She’d been expecting it. Since her new suit jacket came complete with some interesting pouches and inner pockets, she’d already palmed her knife, ready to throw. She’d pinned his sleeve to the ground before he could get off a shot.
    Two Pleasure Dome bouncers had taken charge and convinced the customer to leave quietly. It could have gone differently. It hadn’t. But it had drawn Lydia’s attention.
    Miri had spent the rest of the night in front of the Pleasure Dome using her cigarettes as an excuse to remain there. Lydia didn’t take to smoking, and any employee who entertained the vice had to do so outside. Miri’s defection from inside door duty went unchallenged. Any customers who arrived, she escorted to the front door, opened it and saw them in before returning to the street below.
    Both of Lydia’s guards on outside night patrol had made it a point to compliment her handling of Adam Crispin. Carl, the older of the two, had offered advice.
    “Calvin, you’ll get pulled into a lot of not nice things here. You seem like a decent sort, which means you aren’t for this place. ’Twas it me, I’d be moving on before Lydia moved me up.”
    “I’ve been meaning to ask. What happened to the last butler?”
    “Crispin.” Carl spat on the ground.
    At dawn, the night watch went inside to eat breakfast, leaving the courtyard around the Pleasure Dome unguarded but for her. It was a mark of respect from Lydia’s guards that they trusted Calvin to stand watch while they were inside.
    Miri had been standing on the walk, considering the possibility of leaving and not returning. Fate in the guise of Ned Jackson, or whatever he was calling himself these days, intervened. Ned rode down Rusk Street on a fancy bay, stopped in front of the Pleasure Dome, climbed down and handed her his reins.
    “Take care of my animal and there’s a sawbuck in it for you.” While he’d fished in his pocket for a bill, she’d stepped close enough to take the reins and press her derringer against his side.
    “If it’s a tenner you printed yourself, no thanks,” she’d drawled. “Walk with me, Ned. I’ve something to show you.”
    Miri had found that most people responded to the calm voice of reason. Leading the horse and discreetly jamming her gun in Ned’s ribs, she’d reasoned him all the way to the back, intending to go to the barn, fetch Possum and leave.
    She was closer to the house than the barn when a light went on in the kitchen. Before Ned could squawk or make a fuss, she’d bashed him on the skull, gagged him, tied him and rolled his body under the porch. Then she’d had a spare horse to explain, so she’d led the beast to the barn and stabled it.
    She was almost to the porch with Possum, intending to hoist Ned over the saddle and leave before the day guards