The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff Read Free Book Online

did bother, she swung up on his back and asked him to run. Maggs ran beside them for a dozen strides and then slowed, more interested in standing quietly in the sunshine than racing across the heath for no reason.
    Jack ran, and the wind whipped Pell’s face while the pulse in her neck pounded out fear at the decision she had nearly made. Her thoughts had no time to catch up or take in what she felt, and the tears flew out sideways when she admitted to herself that she could not go through with it. But how could she betray him? They would have to be married, and she would have to make the best of it, despite the fist that squeezed her heart dry.
    She practiced what would happen when he found her, what she might say and how to make it credible to them both. And when she saw him far off on Maggs she raced to him but at the last minute didn’t stop. It reminded him of the game they had played as children, one of them standing in the path and the other galloping full tilt, and neither wanting to be the one to jump aside. Only this time he didn’t move, but stood with a puzzled expression up until the last second, and it wasn’t Pell but Jack who flinched, thrown back almost onto his haunches, so that when she flew up on his neck and then slipped off, trembling, Birdie was there to catch her in his arms, and hear the words she knew he wanted to hear.
    “When shall we marry?” She could barely speak, but answered before he did. “Today? Tomorrow?”
    He smiled, and forgave her instantly, used to her moods and tempers and like a fool, ready to put them aside. “We’ll need to post the banns,” he said. “And you’ll need a new dress.”
    She was fierce then. “No. We’ll do it now.”
    And poor Birdie clasped her to his heart while she panted against him like an animal.
    “You’re wrong to marry that boy,” her mother said when at last Pell came home, half crazed with determination. “You won’t make him happy and God only knows what he’ll make you. Leave him to a proper wife, someone who’ll make a home for him, like Lou.”
    Abruptly Pell was calm. “I’ll make a proper wife for him. I swear.”
    Her mother, who knew her a hundred times better than she knew herself and a thousand times better than the simple-hearted boy next door, shivered at the calm as much as at the storm. And she was right, for Pell was thinking, I shall bring him his tea and work myself to death by the time I am thirty bearing children and scrubbing floors and working in the fields digging turnips till my hands bleed and my back gives out and everyone urges me to keep on for just one more year, at which point I will die of exhaustion and the meagerness of my own life. I will love him and care for him, will never tell him to get his own tea, or sweep the ashes from the hearth or give birth to his own twelfth child himself.
    All the strength in her, all the resolve and pride and power would surrender to him now, and for an instant she felt a kind of relief. He would care for her, provide for her today and every day for the rest of her life, as long as they both should live.
    Pell’s mam sat with her eldest daughter, her face stony with doubt. She was not a woman to believe untruths, no matter how fiercely uttered.

Twelve

    T here was money to be made in Salisbury. There was money to be made holding horses for a penny. The blacksmith made money, the horse dealers and bread sellers made money during the day, and the pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes, and gamblers made money after dark. But what job could Pell do, except to look at a horse and know it?
    All around her, men sealed deals while the sun rendered the scene harsh and flat in the midday glare, then set it afire at twilight. As darkness fell, a man sang a mournful tune while a handful of others kept time, but the smoke from the fire made Pell feel faint and she moved away. Bean, who usually followed without complaint, tugged at her sleeve unhappily.
    “Not much more,” she