"I tried to warn you," she said, and her voice was unsympathetic but her hands were surprisingly gentle as she directed me back to my own room. "Stay in your bed next time."
"But—" I protested.
"She's no more the master's sister than I am," Mariam snorted. "But she runs this house all the same. Now be good or you'll get much worse than a red bottom."
"But I'm hiswife!" I cried wildly.
"Don't you think," Mariam said, her wrinkled face almost leering at me in the moonlight, "that he's already gotten what he wants out of you?"
I screamed so hard I swooned, and I awoke, I know not how much later, in my own bed. And here I lay in this nightmare.
Wondering if my husband would come to me tonight.
Wondering how many nights he'd already come to me with his cock wet from another woman.
Wondering if I dared to keep him out as the floor of my room rotted beneath me.
CHAPTER 9
Gideon
“How long do you plan to keep her around?” Ada asked, drawing a fingernail down Deliverance’s sleeping face.
I kicked my boots up onto the windowsill and leaned back in the chair.
“We’ll see. She’s amusing me.”
“She’s amusing me, too,” Ada said quickly. “I find it very funny how scared she gets by seeing what predators do.”
“She’s for me to play with,” I said. “Not you.”
Ada frowned. There was still a glob of my seed in her hair, dangling unknowingly in her curls, which also amused me.
“I know a nice little whorehouse she could go to,” my mistress whined. “They wouldn’t work hertoohard.”
“Youknow a nice little whorehouse? Not surprised,” I said lazily.
“Look, she’s cried herself to sleep,” Ada said, ignoring my mockery.
It gave me a twinge of irritation to see her touching Deliverance. My wife’s sleeping face looked so angelic and obedient, her dark lashes casting shadows on her pink cheeks,and her long braid splayed over the sheets. The slight puffiness around her eyes was evidence Ada was telling the truth.
“None of your concern. Now move away from her, you’re wheezing.”
“But you’ve already–”
“Already what? My wife is my concern. Not yours.”
“But yousaid—” Ada whined again.
“No. I don’t want anyone to come nosing around.”
“Who would come nosing around? You said you paid the lawyer off. And she doesn’t have any other family.”
“I said no. Don’t make me tell you twice. I’m not ready to get rid of her.”
She pouted.
“Please, Gideon. I just don’t like her. Acts like such a stuck-up princess.”
