Page 141 of The Discount Damsel

“He did what?”

“I’ve been trying to find a way to phrase this all morning.” Sir Roger moped the sweat from his forehead and sucked in a steeling breath. “I know we’re your instructors, Miss Millie, and employed under some very unique circumstances, but I thought you’d showed us more respect when it was time to dismiss one of us.”

“What are you talking about?”

The old hedge knight peered into her face and found only innocent confusion there. “You really don’t know? We woke up this morning to find Beau missing. All his gear was still in his cell, not that it was really his to begin with, but still. Jax asked Fink what happened, and the ferret told him he’d seen the dragon come in and take him.”

Sir Roger swallowed. “Duncan’s in a tizzy, Jax’s twitchier than a fox on hunting day—they don’t know Dirk like I do. They think Beau outlived his usefulness to you and the dragon ate him. I know Dirk’s a self-professed pescatarian, but that dragon is changing . . .”

Her thoughts flew to the collections of shed scales hidden under the dragon’s treasure in the tub. “Dirk didn’t eat him,” she stressed. “And he would never take one of you without— Please excuse me.”

She fled the room, bare feet thundering against the stone steps. The hermit crabs scuttled out of her way or retreated fully into their shells. Her shadow skipped along the stairwell wall in between the beam of sunlight like a hellish thing. Her thighs were burning when she burst into the kitchen, led there by the sound of a whistling kettle.

The apprentice’s face half-turned at her graceless entrance, spectacles flashing. He abandoned his mortar and pestle when she marched right up to him. Fink, who was playing with the chamomile flowers on the counter, backed away from her frightful expression with a squeak.

“I don’t suppose your bluster can wait until after my nap?” Bradley asked.

“Piss and plagues, Bradley. What did you do to Beau?”

“I guess not.” The apprentice crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the counter. He took a long moment before replying, eyeing her. “He was no longer welcome in my tower, so I asked Dirk to drop him off in Calumbria. Now that there’s an open slot in your schedule, perhaps you could bake more of those teacakes? They’re delicious.”

The presumptuous bastard!

“You have no right to dismiss my instructors.” She jabbed her finger into his muscled chest to drive home her point. Her finger would probably bruise, but she didn’t care. “I still haven’t mastered my Escaping Bondage course.”

She’d wanted to goad a reaction out of him last night, which she obviously had, just not the one she’d been hoping for. The man was insufferable. And obtuse!

Bradley took hold of the hand of the finger still jammed into his chest and pulled it way. Didn’t release it. She shivered as a slow predatory smile spread across his lips.

“People seem to have forgotten who’s really in charge here.” He leaned forward so his lips were a breath away from her ear. “Sir Beauregard needed reminding of that. And I think you do, too, Tula.”

When the apprentice didn’t grab a fistful of her hair and drag her lips up to his, Millie realized she needed to ram her fingers into one of his pressure points. But before she could even blink, he bound her wrists in a length of rope that had come out of nowhere.

“Sir! What are you d⁠—”

Bradley yanked her bound hands high above her head, forcing her up on tiptoe, and backed her up to the darkest corner of the kitchen where he normally hung the smoked hams Dirk sometimes exploited from the innocent people of Leighton. The gleam in his blue eyes hinted at either a kinky-but-thorough snogging or⁠—

He deftly strung her up on an abandoned hook and stepped back to watch her dangle.

“What? How?” Millie squirmed on her toes and tried yanking on her hands, but her shoulders were already stretched to their very limits.

“Consider this your Escaping Bondage final exam.” Bradley smirked. “You pass if you can free yourself without cutting the rope.”

Forget cutting the rope. How was she going to get off the hook?!

“Dirk!” she shouted.

“Nice try, but he hasn’t returned from Calumbria yet. And when he does, he’ll be under strict instructions to provide no assistance. Not even water.”

“But I’m his princess. He has to take care of me.”

“Not today.”

The apprentice’s gaze swept from her bound wrists all the way down to her toes that rasped against the stone floor and back to her eyes. At his side, his fingers twitched as if they ached to reach out and trail along the lace border across the top of her corset. Or take her bound hands in one of his and pull her close.

When he did close the distance between them, it was to lean in, craning his face as if he were going to kiss her cheek. His warm breath bloomed against her skin. “Are you just going to stand there?”

She wiggled ferociously, trying to get a knee up and rock him in the groin. Served him right for throwing her own words back into her face and making her blood boil with no small amount of incredulity and arousal. “You scabby, mange-ridden, sack-of-goblin-crap cur!”