Lady Thief: A Scarlet Novel by A.C. Gaughen Read Free Book Online Page A

see you die. I want to see the light tamp out of those devil’s eyes
.
    “No,” he said, kicking a branch out of his path. “No. I don’t think you should go to Gisbourne. I don’t think you should go back to Rob. I don’t think you’re getting anything done by staying at Tuck’s. There isn’t a right way here, Scar, but if I were Rob … I’d want that annulment more than anything.” He looked at me. “The monks said you were asking about how to get out of a marriage. Seems you want this annulment too.”
    “I do,” I admitted. “And sometimes I think, there ain’t nothing what I can’t take, thinking on all we’ve already been through. What could Gisbourne possibly do that I couldn’t take?”
    “Kill you,” he said quiet.
    “He wants something. It’s such a strange offer, he wouldn’t make it just to kill me.”
    “He well might, Scarlet. But say he is telling the truth. There are other ways he could hurt you.”
    I remembered listening to the things my sister had to do in London, the way men touched her. It pushed blood into my cheeks and made me shiver. “Not if he wants an annulment.”
    “
You
want the annulment. What if
he
doesn’t really want an annulment?”
    My shoulders shrugged up, but I didn’t answer him.
    “You’re already married, Scar. If he can’t—or won’t—swear before a priest that you’re still a virgin, there is no annulment. That’s all it takes. He outweighs you by more than a hundred pounds, at least. If he comes after you in close quarters, there isn’t much you and your knives can do about it.”
    I were starting to sway, my head dizzying round.
    “I know I’m scaring you, Scar, even if you can’t admit it. You should be scared. You have a lot of fight ahead of you no matter which way you go.”
    Rubbing my arms didn’t do nothing for the cold, for the hot swirl in my head. “I’m tired of fighting, John.”
    “We’ve all been fighting more than our fair share, Scar. Maybe both of us should start fighting for our happy ending.”
    My eyes shut and my eyeballs felt like ice behind them, like little bits of my eye had gone to frost. “What if there ain’t an end, and it ain’t happy besides?” I asked him. “How could it be, after all this?”
    “I don’t know, Scar.”
    “Can we stop?” I said. My stomach were overtight and rolling and twisting. “I think … ugh,” I whined, bending over, ready to cast up anything that remained in my belly. Nothing came up, but the pain didn’t ease and the world were sliding round me.
    “Come on, we need to get you out of the cold,” he said, tugging my arm.
    I straightened, standing on wobbly knees. My head beat acruel tattoo, and it were choking me. “J-John—” I never got a chance to finish the thought, as the dark trees and bright day pushed together and changed to total dark.

     
    My eyes were bare open before my belly twisted and I retched. I were in a bed, and the best place seemed to be off the side of it. Lucky there were a pot there, and someone set my face toward it.
    When I were done, I looked, and it were Ellie, one of Tuck’s girls. She petted the duck feathers left of my hair where I’d cut it off months before. “You all right?” she asked.
    I shut my eyes and hugged the pillow, but the lumps Rob had put on me yelled in protest and I rolled onto my back. “Christ,” I moaned.
    “Sit up a bit,” she told me. “Tuck sent some broth up.”
    I obeyed, though I didn’t much feel like it. She pushed a bowl at me and I reached to grab it when I saw one hand was covered with bandages hard and stiff. “What …” I asked her.
    She shrugged. “Brother from the monastery said you broke your hand.”
    My chest felt like it cracked open. My hand were broken? I couldn’t throw knives. I couldn’t … Christ, I could barely defend myself. My hands shook as I took the bowl from her.
    Ellie leaned back on her hands. “So strange,” she said, staring at me. “Never would have even