AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But they won’t leave it be—leave you be?”
She shook her head. “So now I find myself, amongst all of them—aunts and uncles and my father and stepmother that have all found the loves of their lives. They all have children and I love every one of my cousins, especially the naughty ones—but they are all much younger than me. I sit awkwardly in the middle of all that happiness with two fathers that are determined to protect me from anything in life that can possible hint at harming me.”
She looked down to her gloves, her fingers twisting on the leather reins. “But I’m not eight or twelve or fourteen or sixteen. I’m a grown woman. They are trying so hard to protect me in effort to not lose any more of me. They’re grasping at the lost time instead of understanding what I am now. What I need.”
“What is it that you need?”
She looked up to him. “To be let go.”
{ Chapter 8 }
Victoria hadn’t said much of anything the entire rest of the day. It was deuced hard to seduce a woman when she didn’t talk. That, he hadn’t figured on.
She just wanted to ride. Didn’t want to stop for food or for breaks to stretch her legs. Only forward.
It wasn’t until she almost slipped off her horse at nightfall that Rafe made them double back the mile to the last small village they passed and get a set of rooms at a coaching inn. It was just as well, for the biting wind carried the first bitter flakes of snow.
Delivering a dead Victoria to her father would get him nowhere as far as true revenge was concerned. Death was quick. Painful to accept, but quick, final. There wasn’t true suffering with a death. And he meant to make Lord Troubant suffer.
When Rafe stepped back into the night air outside the inn after procuring the rooms, he was surprised to find Victoria laughing, talking to the stable boy as he gathered the reins of the horses.
She’d been nearly asleep not but five minutes ago.
The stable boy led the horses off and she turned toward Rafe. The mirth on her face drained away instantly.
She was good at putting on a pleasant façade. He would have to remember that.
The fatigue of the last few days had set deep into her face, the dark half-circles under her eyes made even more ominous with the shadows of the flickering lanterns hanging beside the doorway. The fatigue wasn’t helped by the fact that she’d eaten very little before they’d left in the morning, and had only nibbled at a chunk of bread he’d bought when passing through a village.
She needed sleep and she needed food.
He pulled open the door and lifted his hand toward the opening. “I have our rooms.”
She stepped past him, a long, slight exhale slipping from her lips, almost like she was in pain.
He moved into the inn after her, leading her to the stairs on the far side of the common room. “We’re on the third level. I’ll gather some food and bring it up after I get you into your room.”
She nodded, silent, and started up the stairs.
With every step upward, it was quickly becoming apparent that something wasn’t right in her body. Her right leg bent fine, but she swung her left leg out at every step, as though she didn’t want to bend it. He couldn’t see her face, but could sense the grimace on her lips by the strained tendon running along the side of her neck. Her grip on the railing so tight, her hand jerked upward along the smooth wood with every step.
What he assumed was the result of two long days’ worth of riding became apparent as something more by the time they reached the second landing of the stairs.
He studied her carefully as they ascended the last flight of stairs. At the corridor to their rooms, he grabbed her arm to stop her before she made it down the long hallway.
“Victoria, wait, turn around.”
She did so slowly, her eyes peering up at him expectantly. Pain had etched little lines around her eyes that didn’t cease even as she forced a questioning smile onto her face. “Yes?”
“Are you injured?”
“What? No.”
“The look on your face tells me otherwise.”
“I don’t know what my face is telling you, but I am fine.”
“Then if not your face, the fact that you struggled up all those stairs tells me something different.”
