AllFreeNovel
Share Us
No.
Blast.
With her elbows she scrambled herself backward until her heels hit solid ground and she flipped, lifting herself to her knees. A cough to clear her lungs, followed by a deep breath, and she found her voice. “Wes.”
He didn’t look up to her.
“Wes.”
He shifted slightly and she saw it. The box in his hands. The open box.
“Wes.”
His head lifted and he looked to her. “I think—I think maybe we should keep it.”
She froze. “What?”
“I think we should keep it.” He nodded toward his hands. “The box can do us good.”
It took her a full second to realize, to understand what he’d just said. What he’d just proposed.
After all that he’d told her about the blasted thing. After it rotted Morton from the inside out. He was thinking to keep the devil box.
Laney inhaled a deep breath, the weight of the instant change in Wes sinking into her lungs as she searched for calm.
His stare left her and he looked down at the box again.
She exhaled, staring at him, not sure if she’d just lost him in that moment. If what he’d been afraid of had just happened—the box had taken him over.
Even though she attempted a calm facade, she scrambled to her feet. “Wes.” Her voice a shout, she pointed up the river. “Walk to the bridge, I need you.”
He glanced at her and then looked back to the box, his head shaking. “I can see the look in your eyes, Laney. You think I’ve gone mad. But I haven’t.” He lifted the open box in the air to her. “I see it so clearly now. The box can give us back everything I lost. Everything we lost. It can correct the past.”
She started moving along the bank toward the bridge. “How? There is nothing we can do about the past.”
“Except there is.” Mirroring her, his feet started moving toward the bridge. Small favor. “I can get my title back—a new title—the riches the box can bring will easily buy me that. Don’t you see? We can go back into society again—respected—no one will be able to touch us with their upturned noses. Not ever again.”
Heaven help her, shehadjust lost him.
Her mind frantic, she pulled back her lips, plastering a smile onto her face. She just had to keep him walking. Walking to the bridge. Walking to her.
“But what will that gain us?”
“What will it gain us? Everything.” His voice pitched, manic. “I want people to look at you not with scorn, not with pity because you are my wife. You are everything and I want everyone to see you as I do. I want my blood unsoiled again. I don’t want it to taint our children.”
She nodded, fighting hard to keep the edges of her smile in place. The bridge was only steps away. “So you’re doing this for me?”
“For us, Laney—don’t you see? We can have everything. Title, power, respect—everything I lost. I can give you everything, just like I always wanted. Just like I always planned.”
“Yes.” Her wet skirts slapping at her legs, she jumped up onto the side of the bridge. Just a little bit further. “It is a dream—a magical wonderful dream, Wes.”
He stepped onto the opposite end of the bridge, his dark eyes wild with excitement. “So you agree? You agree we should keep it? Let it help us?”
Almost there.
He stopped ten feet from her, the open box clutched in his right hand next to his belly.
As much as she wanted to run to him, her feet slowed until she was at a standstill five steps away from him.
