Page 133 of The Widow and the Wanted

My gaze drifts past him to a worktable near the wall.

A tin basin. Rope. A lamp.

Swept into one corner is a mess of roots and dried leaves, carelessly piled together as if gathered with other yard sweepings. Dried cattails. Grass. Dead hollow stems, purple-brown streaks gone dull with frost, dried umbels, and pale tuberous roots split open where some fool has chopped them with a spade and tracked them inside on his boots.

My pulse kicks once, hard.

Cicuta maculata.

Of course.

Mary and I found a patch near a marshy bend in October. Then it still held a few white flowers through fall, innocent as lace. In winter it looks like nothing at all. Dead stems. Muddy roots. Just like every other withered thing above ground in this block of ice.

Everett follows my gaze, and I smooth my face before he can track the source of my interest.

We settle in, and a nervous-looking woman brings supper not long after. Potatoes, carrots, a side of boiled beef gone gray at the edges. She will not meet my eyes. Her hands shake as she sets the tray down.

Beside me, Everett writes into a notebook. He peeks up at me, noticing me noticing him. “Eat, if you can.”

“I am not hungry.”

“Come now, I must return you to Goldie in good health.”

“Then perhaps I should starve.”

I catch only a glint of irritation before his hand is in my hair.

My face slams into the plate with a crash.

Silverware clatters off the table. Pain bursts white behind my eyes. Before I can draw breath, he yanks me up and brings me down once more. The second blow splits inside my mouth.

When he releases me, the room spins.

I do not look at him.

I will not.

“I think you’ll find,” Everett says gently, “that you will enjoy my company much better if you can follow my instructions.”

My breath comes shallow through my nose. I nod once. The nod costs me something. I feel it leave me.

Everett draws a handkerchief from his coat. White linen. Monogrammed, of course.

I flinch when he reaches for me.

“Be still.” Not sharply. Worse. Softly.

I go still because my face throbs and my mouth is full of blood, and because there is no dignity in making him hold me down to clean what he has done.

He cups my chin with one hand. With the other, he wipes mashed potato from my cheek, dabs at my split lip, takes care around my nose where pain blooms hot and bright.

“There,” he murmurs. “No permanent harm.”

I stare at his waistcoat rather than his face.

“You are doing very well, Mrs. Clay.”

He folds the ruined handkerchief once, hiding the blood inside, and sets it beside his plate as if it is merely a used napkin.