Gallows Pole by Eris Adderly

Author:Eris Adderly [Adderly, Eris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781682597279
Publisher: Blushing Books
Published: 2016-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

* * * *

The pair of crows hopped around beneath the spreading branches of the maple beside the hay barn, scavenging. Emmat was now able to tell one from the other by an unruly feather jutting low, untameable from a glossy wing. It was not a good sign. She’d been alone too long.

It had been seven days. A week. Had he left for good?

Vane hadn’t wanted her to see his face, for reasons now uncomfortably plain, but…to run? A severe reaction from a man who had subdued her more than once. The upper hand was his, ruined face or no.

In a concerted black fluttering, the crows quit their foraging for the upper arms of the maple. Emmat’s eyes left the bucket she was raising from the well to skim the treeline, the road.

A rider approached on a horse that was neither massive, nor black.

Who’s this now?

She hauled the bucket the rest of the way, keeping a wary gaze on the potential for trouble headed in her direction.

The vague form atop the trotting bay materialized into cassock and cap. Her brows came down as she set the bucket on the ground.

It can’t be.

“Mrs Vane?” the older man asked, halting the horse a few yards from the well.

But it was. The self-same chaplain. His voice would ring true forever in her ears. Emmat folded her arms over her chest. Said nothing.

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well.” Dismounted.

“Are you, er …” The man didn’t venture far from the horse. His hands wrung together, defensive in the line of her glare. “That is, is everything …”

“It’s as can be expected, Chaplain,” she said, ending his stammering.

He nodded, her confirmation of his suspicions setting his mouth in a grim line as he turned to rummage in a saddlebag.

“I’ve uh…I’ve brought you some things,” he said, coming out with a lumpy sack. “A bit of salt pork, a cheese, a few others. Some things a woman might want around the house.” Emmat’s frown deepened. “You’ll forgive me; I don’t exactly know—”

“I’ve no interest in your charity.”

“Oh no,” he said, eyes wide now as he approached with the bag. “When I last saw your husband, I offered my help and he wouldn’t have it, either. It’s no charity, Mrs Vane”—he dangled the bundle for her to take—“he furnished the coin for all of it.”

She narrowed her eyes at the proffered bundle, as though he were handing her something poisonous.

“Vane paid for this.” It was not a question, but somehow a statement she wanted to test against reality.

“Oh yes. He insisted. Please.” He pressed forward with the bag. Her mouth came into a hard line, but she relieved him of it at last, holding it at her side, unopened.

The chaplain’s gaze made a brief tour of the property before circling back to Emmat. The man might as well have had his cap in his hands, rotating it through his fingers for all the discomfort he wore in his stance.

“You know, he…he said nothing to me at all of a marriage before that night.

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