Page 12 of The Piper's Pursuit

The child stopped, his face turning pale. He turned and went back to his mother.

“Hold my hand, you naughty—” She stopped and her face began to crumple.

“Don’t cry, Mama. I’m sorry. I’ll hold your hand now.” The little boy grasped his mother’s hand.

“I just don’t want the beast to get you. You know that.”

They walked on past.

“The people here are very frightened, aren’t they?” Steffan appeared at her side. He had already opened his bundle and was taking a bite of bread and cheese.

“I thought you already broke your fast.”

“I did.” He chewed and swallowed. “I got hungry again.”

His smile was so friendly it made her angry. She shouldn’t have said anything to him. She opened her own bundle and took a bite, keeping her head turned away from the talkative duke’s son.

“So, have you actually seen this Beast of Hamlin?”

Katerina considered ignoring him, but finally she shook her head.

“I heard a rumor that a few people have seen it and lived to tell of it.”

“Two people. A man was attacked but beat it off with a stick.”

“May I talk to him?”

“He’s dead. Died of a putrid fever from his wounds.”

“And the other person?”

“A woman who beat it off with a broken tree limb.” Katerina spoke around the food in her mouth. Let him think her uncouth and unmannerly. She certainly had no wish to impress him.

“And where were these two people attacked?”

“You will have to excuse me,LordSteffan.” Katerina glanced at him as she neared the front door of Bridda’s home. “I have business here. Fare well.”

She turned her back on him, stuffed the remainder of her breakfast in her shoulder bag, and knocked on the wooden door that was fancifully painted and carved with a unicorn and a lion facing each other, vines and leaves surrounding them.

A woman answered the door looking distracted. “Yes?”

“I am Katerina, the mayor’s daughter.” She cringed inwardly at the words that so disgusted her, but the people actually looked up to her stepfather as sort of a savior of the town, more because that was how he portrayed himself than because of anything he had done. And she would use the fact that the mayor was her stepfather if it helped her discover the truth about the disappearances of Hamlin’s children. “May I come in?”

“Oh.” The woman covered her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. She quickly stepped back and opened the door wide. “I am so grateful to you for finding my little girl.”

As Katerina stepped inside, she felt something brush against her back. She looked over her shoulder and there was Steffan, hovering right behind her.

“What are you doing?” she whispered up at him. “Get out.”

He shook his head, a slight movement, then whispered back, “Let me stay. I can help.”

Katerina barely had time to whisper, “No!” when Bridda’s mother lifted her red eyes to Katerina’s and grabbed her hand. “Thank you, Fräulein Katerina. I cannot tell you how grateful we are.”

Bridda’s mother’s sincere emotion drove away Kat’s fury at Steffan. But if he betrayed her or Bridda’s family in any way, she would make him rue it.

“I only found her wandering out of the woods. Has she told you what happened and where she had been staying?”

The woman sniffed and shook her head as she led them through the corridor.