His Mask of Retribution (24 page)
Read His Mask of Retribution Online
Authors: Margaret McPhee
‘I have to settle with the teahouse. An honourable man repays all his debts.’
From the heft and size of the pouch, it must have held more coins than a month’s take at the teahouse. She chuckled.
‘What do you find so funny?’
‘They just gave that to you?’
‘Yes,’ Fei Long said, puzzled.
She laughed outright. She couldn’t help herself. For some reason, this was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. She recalled the jade seal that he had shown at the teahouse, which practically had her master kow-towing.
‘They just give you money…’ she caught her breath between gasps ‘…for nothing!’
She shook her head and grabbed at her sides. They ached from laughing so hard. When she looked up, Chang Fei Long was glaring at her.
‘Our family name is good as a guarantee of payment,’ he said stiffly.
She sucked in a breath and tried to compose herself. Of course it wasn’t funny to him that someone like her would never touch money of her own, no matter how hard she laboured. Lord Chang simply had to walk into a municipal office. Yet she was the beggar, he the nobleman.
Money from air. All things were possible—even a peasant posing as a princess in a foreign land.
‘Yes,’ she said, in a long-delayed answer to his proposal. ‘Yes, I’ll go with you, my lord.’
They headed back towards the teahouse then. Her former master would see that she was leaving town with the same gentleman they’d thrown her out over. The thought had her doubling over in laughter once more.
ISBN: 9781459238381
Copyright © 2012 by Margaret McPhee
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