How to Lose a Bride in One Night by Sophie Jordan Read Free Book Online Page B

hands out in front of her and laced her fingers together, interlocking them. “Your lives are woven together now. Threads in a tapestry.”
    Annalise stared at those gnarled hands, the locked fingers. A heaviness built in her chest. It was not true. The woman possessed antiquated principles. She owed Mr. Crawford her gratitude. Nothing more. He certainly wanted no long-standing connection between them. He scarcely spoke to her.
    If she was bound to anyone, tragically, it was Bloodsworth. As much as she was loath to admit it, in the eyes of the law and before God she had bound herself to the evil man. Immediately, she felt his weight bearing down on her, smelled his brandy-laden breath . . . heard the echo of his words. Little cow, I’m thinking you’ll sink straight to the bottom.
    She sucked in a deep breath. Her fist knotted in the blanket covering her lap as if she could crush the reminder in her grip. Her breakfast of porridge and milk threaten to rise up on her.
    She belonged to no man. Not her social-climbing father who wanted nothing more than to wed her to the highest bidder—she saw that now. Not her husband. And not some stranger who scraped her up off the banks of the river. She was her own independent woman and would be solely that from now on. She would recover, heal, and carve a new life for herself somewhere far from all of them.
    Mirela watched her with interest, one gray eyebrow lifted in silent inquiry. Annalise, shaking her head slightly, forced a tremulous smile and turned her attention to the portrait of a long-ago family member set within the cupboard.
    She held silent as Mirela went about gathering the wet linens used for her sponge bath earlier in the day. After a few moments she found her voice to ask, “When do you think I can get out of this bed?”
    “Hmm. Perhaps another four . . . five weeks.”
    She felt her eyes bulge in her face. “Five weeks?”
    “You broke your leg . . .”
    “Last time I didn’t stay in bed nearly so long.” She had already confessed to the childhood memory of breaking her leg when she fell from a tree. She thought that could be important for Mirela to know as she went about nursing her. After all, just because she remembered something that happened to her at fourteen did not mean she could remember the traumatic event from a week ago.
    “And you had a limp, no?”
    Annalise nodded again.
    “That is why. You did not give it time to heal properly.” Mirela looked at her in accusation. As if she was to blame for her limp.
    Not that she’d had much of a choice in the matter. Mrs. Danvers demanded her up and moving about within a week, helping her mother with the smaller children in the nursery. Her mother’s employer did not care one whit about allowing her time to recuperate.
    Mirela lifted the bowl of soapy water. “This time, we will let it heal.” She stabbed one gnarled finger toward Annalise. “You will not move from that bed.”
    Her face flushed both hot and cold as the reality of her life for the next five weeks settled over her.
    She would remain in this bed, in this wagon, with a strange man sleeping a foot away from her every night? It wasn’t to be borne.
    A path of sunlight tunneled into the wagon as Mirela opened the door and descended the steps. Annalise leaned forward, eager and aching for its warmth, for the vast openness of the outdoors. Just as quickly the light was gone. The door shut with a click and she was all alone in a space that felt like it was shrinking by the moment. She slumped back in the bed, quite convinced she would go stark raving mad stuck here for several more weeks.
    O wen looked up from where he stacked an armful of kindling he had gathered from the nearby woods. Mirela stood in front of him, the rare afternoon sunlight glinting off her many brilliant gold necklaces.
    “Mirela,” he greeted, marveling how this elderly, slow-moving woman managed to move with such stealth. He never heard her approach.
    “What