“Fine. For all his bragging about his prowess with a javelin, he hits like a girl.”
I knelt to examine her better and discovered blood dripping from her mouth. “You’re hurt!”
“It’s nothing,” Laurel said casually. “Don’t be a mother hen. This is part of the job.”
I made to unshackle her from the pillory, but Laurel shifted as much as the pillory would allow. “Wait. Give it a few more hours.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Absolutely I mean it. If he gets suspicious and comes back, he needs to find me here.”
At her request, I waited until mid-day before I finally released her. Since it would have looked too suspicious to stay beside her the entire time, I went about my regular duties, though I accomplished very little. Every report blurred before my eyes and every conversation dragged on too long. My thoughts kept returning to the castle entrance, to the sun climbing higher, and to Laurel locked in that blasted pillorybecause she was too clever and too stubborn to do anything halfway. By the time I got back to release Laurel, the back of her neck was sunburned. “Sorry,” I said quietly as I lifted the upper part of the frame.
Laurel pulled her head and hands free and rolled her shoulders. “Don’t apologize. I was the one who told you to put me there. Now, I need to hurry and clean before Agnes makes you put me back in the stocks. Unless you were serious about terminating my position, that is. I take it that was just for Leopold’s benefit?”
I nodded and she glanced up at the towering wall behind me. “There are guards over there. You better start shouting at me now.” She bowed her head in perfect imitation of a servant with a broken spirit.
I yelled for the better part of five minutes, then sent her back inside with orders to double her workload. Laurel let tears trickle down her face as I shouted. Dale had taught her well. She left the tear streaks on her cheeks as she returned to the servants’ quarters.
I tried not to think about what might have happened if Leopold had gone straight to Prince John instead of me…
If Leopold had insisted that I whip Laurel in front of him…
If she had been unable to defend herself the night before…
If someone had discovered that Laurel was not really Isabella… All of this was far too precarious.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like how many ways this could go wrong, or how easily one careless word could put Laurel in chains for real. I didn’t like pretending to punish her and I despised myself for letting Leopold hit her. I hated standing between her and danger while pretending to be the danger myself.
But seeing Laurel in her element—with her on our side, it almost made me feel like we had a chance to win.
LAUREL
The moment I re-entered the castle, Walter ran up to me.
He was panting heavily, one gloved hand pressed to a stitch in his side, and his face had gone so pale beneath the flush of exertion that for one terrible moment I thought something must be wrong. “Are you all right?” he gasped. “I heard what happened. I was scared that… that…”
He looked so wildly panicked that my own heart gave a small, uneasy jump. “I’m fine now,” I assured him, lowering my voice so the servants passing behind us would not hear too much. “What did you hear?”
I wanted to know exactly what rumors were being spread. Servants’ quarters were faster than any royal messenger when it came to gossip.
“They said the new sheriff took you.” Walter looked me over, his eyes lingering on my hands, wrists, and neck as though searching for injuries. When he seemed to find nothing alarming, he let out a long breath of relief. “I thought… I just know he can be brutal. I was worried about you.”
“Thank you, Walter. You’re so sweet.” I patted his arm, careful to make my hand tremble just enough to be convincing.“It was pretty terrifying. He interrogated me for hours about what happened to the duke’s son. I couldn’t think straight by the end.”
“Was the duke’s son the one you were with yesterday?” Walter asked. His breathing was finally returning to normal, though concern still pinched his brow. “He looked like trouble. What happened?”
I gave a quick glance down the corridor, then leaned closer. “He was just drunk,” I whispered. “He could hardly walk straight and I tried to leave, but he followed me then he stumbled and fell down the stairs.”
Walter’s eyes widened.
“Anyway,” I finished with a helpless little shrug, “the duke claimed that I pushed him, so they put me in the stocks.”
“A girl like you push the duke’s son down the stairs?” Walter said incredulously.
I shook my head. “That’s what he said. I didn’t push him down the stairs, I promise, but the sheriff wasn’t going to believe a servant girl when a duke said something else. Just my rotten luck.” I gave a hearty sniff and lowered my gaze. “I never want to go back to the pillory. I was so scared.”
Walter’s face softened at once. “Don’t you fret. You just stay away from the sheriff and you will be all right. He’s a dangerous man.”
