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“Nothing!” She quickly turned her daughter away and grabbed her hand, cautiously approaching the house. They passed through the wooden gate connected to the property’s waist-high stone wall. They walked across crisp grass and wilted wildflowers and finally stopped before the arched wooden door of the small, two-story structure. Her fingers shook as she wrapped them around the door handle and turned.
It was locked.
Relief escaped on her sigh as she unlocked it with the key and ushered her girls inside. To Maisy, she said, “Get your little sister supper, will you? I’ll be inside in a minute.”
Or a few…
Her gaze despondently turned to the dripping red paint. Last week, her cow had been stolen. And this week, it was defacement.
Ignoring her protesting leg, she gathered a scrub brush, soap, and water before kneeling on the cold ground. She began to clean.
Red bled into red, quickly tainting the bowl of water. The scrub brush oozed paint like a bloody wound. Her leg throbbed against the cold, brittle ground. An unforgiving chill shivered down her spine.
But she did not cry.
And she did not curse.
She deserved this. But her daughters did not.
Crack!
Nyana inhaled sharply as her heart shot to her throat. She spun around where she knelt. Only to find a familiar face standing over the chopping block, an ax in his hands. Joel Harrington’s chin-length golden brown fell over his bright green eyes as he brought the ax down again, chopping a piece of wood clean in half. His facial hair was trimmed short, enhancing the gentle mirth of his lips and the determined set of his thin brows. She had known Joel longer than she had known Calle. In fact, he had been the one to introduce them.
After her awful husband had sentenced Joel’s entire family to death, they had fled Heulwen four years ago. Only recently, he returned to aid Calle in taking the throne from Liam.
Her eyes burned as she turned her attention back to scrubbing, putting more weight into it than before. She refused to cry. “You shouldn’t do that.”
Split!
“Why not?”
Crack!
“We don’t need your charity.”
Joel snorted, and she glanced over her shoulder to find him smirking at her, ax in hand, one foot resting on the tree stump while his horse wandered the yard searching for something to graze on. “Nyana, we have known each other for years. We’re friends, and I’m happy to do it. It’s all right to accept help once in a while.”
When her eyes began to burn again, she turned back to her task and scrubbed vigorously, erasing the foul word from her home. She’d stolen money little by little from Liam each time he’d come to her drunk, pockets jingling with coins. He’d never noticed her taking a few here and a couple there. Rightfully, the money she’d used to purchase the cottage should have been Calle’s. But it was all that she’d had.
Now, she had little left other than what she made from selling the clothing she crafted by hand.
“They’re wrong, you know.” Joel’s voice startled her out of her reverie.
“Who?”
“Whoever defaced your home. You are no murderer.”
She stood and wiped her wet hands over her skirt when the last of the red paint disappeared beneath her administration. “And why not? After all, the wife of a monster must also be a monster.”
Arms piled with firewood, he approached but stopped short of the porch, not venturing any closer. Ever since Liam’s death, he’d never touched her, never strayed too close. And she was grateful for it.
He eyed her with bright, intelligent eyes that never missed a detail. “Is that what you tell yourself? That you’re a monster?”
Not able to bear the weight of his scrutiny, she glanced away.
He shifted the wood from one arm to the other. “Do those sweet girls think it of you? You sure bet they don’t. They think the world of you, Nyana.”
A reply didn’t grace her tongue fast enough before the door flew open. Both Maisy and Eva stumbled out, giggling excitedly.
