Innocence Unveiled. Blythe Gifford

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      Katrine tiptoed up the stairs to her room unseen by her aunt, who was peering carefully at each fork before she wrapped it for travel. But as Katrine opened her trunk to grab the bag of coins hidden under her clothes, she heard the heavy thump of her uncle’s steps.

      Wood scraped on wood as he flung open the door. She stuffed the coins back to the bottom of the trunk, then smoothed the folds from her second-best kirtle, re-folding the warm gold wool with damp palms.

      ‘Don’t turn your back on me.’ He grabbed her right arm and swung her around him. The kirtle tumbled into a golden puddle.

      A sour taste cut her tongue. ‘I am facing you now,’ she said, chin up, looking squarely into his eyes. There was a strangeness there that made her shiver. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘Hurry your packing. We must be well along before dark.’

      Think before you speak. But there was only the truth. ‘I am not going. I must tend my father’s work.’

      He tightened his grip and shook her. ‘Your place is where I say it is.’ He closed the open lid. ‘With us. Your father indulged you too long. The shop is closed. Now. Today.’

      ‘No.’ She wrenched her arm away from his grip, rubbing the spot his fingers had bruised. It was too late to placate him and she had never been good at it.

      ‘Wilful wench. You’re a curse on the name of Gravere.’

      Over and over, he had said so, until all she wanted to do was hide from a shame she didn’t even understand. ‘If you think so, then I’ll free you from concern about me. I’ll move to the shop.’

      The thought alone brought blessed relief. How wonderful to be away from the reach of his fist.

      ‘You think to live alone and play the whore?’ His eyes turned hot, wild. She no longer tried to meet them. He looked frantically at her wimple, then at her surcoat, then at her skirts, as if searching for a way inside the layers of clothes concealing everything but her face and hands. ‘You are an evil, red-haired daughter of Eve and the Devil,’ he snarled, at last. ‘A temptation to man.’

      By the blessed saint, what have I done that leads him to these thoughts?

      ‘I am the daughter of Lady Mary and Sir Denys de Gravere,’ she said, wishing again she had told her father what went on when he was away from the house. It had not seemed important when he was gone only a few days. ‘Your brother is no devil.’

      His breath came faster. He flexed his fingers as if they itched to move over her body and glared directly at her mouth. ‘You are your mother’s daughter. You have her face. Her body. Her sins.’

      ‘There was no sin in her.’ She barely remembered her mother, but she knew that.

      ‘Enough.’ He laid his hands on her and pushed. Unprepared, her knees buckled, hitting the plank floor with bruising force. ‘You will obey me.’

      Saint Catherine, give me courage. She swallowed her fear, then stared back, pinching the wool of her skirt so tightly the weave carved its pattern on her thumb. ‘No.’

      His fingers hovered close to her throat. Then, his thumbs choked her breath until she could no longer swallow, could barely see, could only claw at his massive arms, desperate to break his hold.

      Suddenly, he let go, pulling back as if her hands had burned him.

      ‘Just like her.’ He threw the words behind him and stomped out of the room.

      Katrine sank back on to her heels, coughing, gagging, fighting the nausea rising from her stomach. She was no longer safe in this house. Leaving was no longer a choice. Leaving was a necessity.

      At the clink of a sword in the hall, she looked up. Her uncle stood at the door with one of his retainers.

      ‘Since you want to stay, you will. Here. In this room.’ Her uncle pulled out a key and reached for the door handle, nodding at the man. ‘Watch her here until I return.’

      The door shut and the key rattled in the iron lock.

      ‘No!’ СКАЧАТЬ