The Sevenfold Spell by Tia Nevitt Read Free Book Online

else. I began to think that taking lovers was not worth the heartache afterward.
    However, it was difficult to help myself. I have known two types of spinsters. The straight, starched sort, who might as well be nuns, and the strumpet. I had a passionate nature, and self-abuse only worked so long.
    With my neighborhood off-limits, I haunted the taverns near the center of town. I decided to use the men as they used me. We’d begin by flirting, then dandle for a few weeks, and then move on when the newness faded. I did have a few favorites, but I allowed none to touch my heart. I helped a few of the younger, more insecure men gain some experience before their marriages. And I kept the widowers warm on cold nights.
    My infrequent confessions went something like this:
    “I have not been chaste, as a maiden ought,” I would say to the priest.
    “With whom have you not been chaste?”
    “A butcher. A baker. A candlestick maker.”
    “And are you sorry for these sins?”
    “No, I can’t say that I am.”
    “Then until you are, your soul will bear its burden.”
    The local bachelors talked about me, I know. They traded stories—but they always went happily to my bed. To the aisle? Never.
    I spoke of it to Harla, sometimes. “I would make a good wife,” I said.
    “I’ve no doubt of that,” she said.
    “I’m ready to be faithful to a good man who would have me,” I said. “I would devote myself to him and his children.”
    “You’re thinking of Willard.”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you love him, then?”
    “I didn’t think of it as love. There wasn’t any time to think of anything but having him.”
    “We all thought you went mad for him.”
    “I did. I wanted his child.”
    She looked at me in shock. “Out of wedlock?”
    “I couldn’t have him, so I wanted a piece of him.”
    “Then, you really did love him.”
    I didn’t reply, but I did wonder about that. Why did I offer myself to him? Although to lie with him had been my own choice, it would have never been a choice I would have made had we been able to marry. I thought of the child I had wanted so badly, of little Aurora who was never conceived. She would be coming on her menses about now, had she been born. More often, I thought of Willard. Eventually, I realized that I had loved him, just like Harla said. It was the only explanation that made any sense.
    And it was the only explanation that accounted for my odd taste in men. I was picky, in my own way. I looked for the men so often rejected by other women: the too thin, the too chubby, the too pocked, the too graying. But I also looked for shyness, for awkwardness, for the socially inept. Was I looking for another Willard? Perhaps. I never found one, but I did find some men who stayed with me for lengths of time that measures in months rather than weeks. One even stayed with me for over a year.
    Only one was handsome.

Chapter Six
Andrew
    I met him, of all places, in church.
    I typically crept into the church during odd hours, as sinners are wont to do. Before dawn, during dinner, after the pubs closed. I would slip into a pew in the very back alcove and pray in the most unobtrusive spot I could find.
    It was no wonder that he never saw me. He stalked up to the altar in the manner of a hypocrite—or of one who has few sins to hide. There, he swept back his cape and started yelling at God.
    “Why, Lord?” he cried. “Why create a girl who can never be a woman? Why make her so wonderful? Am I, too, the victim of a spell? Or do you send the devil to torment us all?”
    He fell silent. I wonder if, perhaps, he was getting his answer from God.
    His next words I would not have heard at all if the church had not been designed to carry sounds so well. “Why make me love her when I can never have her?”
    And then he collapsed into a pew and wept. His cape fell about him so he only appeared as a shadow.
    I watched him for a moment. I suspected he was very young. Only the young seem to feel anguish with such