Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Clunk.
Merc throws the heavy bolt that runs from the door panels through the jamb and into a seat screwed into the wall. Then he yanks at the handle. With a comment under his breath, I’m unsure whether or not he approves.
“I want you to engage this anytime I leave.” He taps the latch. “Every time.”
He goes over to the en suite. As he disappears inside, I lay my hand on the footboard of the bed and wonder what the sleeping arrangements will be. After that kiss at the stream, I find myself hoping for things I very much doubt I’m made for—
My ears perk up and I glance at the door.
Singing. I hear … a woman singing.
It’s muffled, but the sweet, high notes are a surprise—
“I’m going downstairs.” Merc comes back out, shrugs off his pack and puts it on the window seat. “I don’t know what they’ll bring up for food, and if it’s not appetizing, I’ll find something that is.”
“I can go with—”
“You’re asleep on your feet. Have a wash-up and a lie-down.” He frees the bolt and looks back at me. “I am waiting on the far side until I hear this latch—and don’t touch it until my voice returns on the other side.”
“How will I get the food.”
“I’m bringing it up to you.”
All of his weapons are on him as he opens things, and even he seems surprised as he notices the singing. Past the heft of him, I see a diminutive, brown-haired maid with a bucket and scrub brush backing out of the room across the hall. The second she notices Merc, she shuts up and makes no eye contact, and with the way she hunches over as if bracing for blows, I worry that she’s been beaten in the past.
“Was that you singing?” Merc asks.
“Forgive me, sir,” she says, and cowers against the wall.
Before I have a cogent thought, my body’s moving, and I duck out under Merc’s arm. “You did nothing wrong. You have a beautiful voice—”
Without thinking, I look into her lovely brown eyes, and gasp.
Forty
A Dangerous Resolve.
The murder of the young girl spills into me on a series of body blows that I feel as if my own head and shoulders are absorbing them. I fall back and put my arms over my face, but the sequence has been initiated and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, block it, swerve away. Crumpling to the floorboards, I land in the position she will and hunker down, trying to protect myself against the attack.
That’s when the iron skillet comes at our head.
I look up through the crisscross of my forearms.
Clear as if it’s happening in the present, I see the man who stands over her, his paunchy face twisted in rage, his loose mouth open as he yells at her, the veins in his sweaty neck popping as he starts the downward motion that will lead to her death—
“Sorrel!”
The sound of my own name pulls me out of the vision, and then I feel Merc’s hands bring my arms to my sides. His face is right above mine, and I duck my eyes and flinch away, only partly myself, still mostly the maid—and I cannot bear the pain of the girl with the sweet voice’s demise.
“Look at me, are you ill?” Merc strokes my cheek. “Sorrel.”
“Perhaps she needs food?” The maid is so tentative as she comes a little closer. “I could go get her some bread and water?”
Merc shoves his hand into his pocket and holds a coin out to her. “Come back fast.”
She bows to him. “Yes, sir.”
The maid doesn’t take the coin and hurries off, her red felt skirt like the base of a bell. In my stupor, I imagine a tiny pair of feet in brown leather slips going at a fast whisper over the gray floorboards of the corridor. Were the shoes brown in my vision? I don’t know why I think they’re brown—
The world spins and shifts as more thunder roars, and the building shakes. For a moment, I fear we’ve been struck by that orange lightning and the roof is collapsing, but no. It’s Merc. He’s picked me up off the floor in the hall and is carrying me into our room and over to the bed. The way he lays me down, as if I’m something that could break, brings tears to my eyes.
Especially because I have the sense that maid with the lovely singing voice has never been treated so kindly.
Merc sits next to me on the edge of the bed, his hip tilting the mattress so that my body rolls into him. He has all those weapons on his body, but with the way he looks at me, I feel as though he’s disarmed.
“We traveled a long way today.” His callused hand goes to my chin and he untucks the sackcloth I’ve used as a face cover. “You did very, very well.”