LESBIAN ROMANCE: Roommates by Valerie Reyes

Author:Valerie Reyes [Reyes, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-11-08T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

The next morning, Elspeth woke to raised voices out the window. There was a crowd gathered in the open ground in front of the village church. She looked at the bed next to her. Fiona wasn’t there. She must have overslept.

As quickly as she could, she slipped on her dress and her still-muddy shoes from the night before. She passed woven baskets on the way out – all the plants Granaidh had harvested from the garden before they were truly ready. She’d walked into the house the night before as though still in a dream, and all night had in fact dreamed of the wolf. She’d forgotten, somehow, the difficulty and the danger. She’d forgotten that she was about to be forced from her home and away from her parents by a war she had no interest in fighting, for a protector of the realm she had no reason nor inclination to love.

The crowd was centered around a man, tall and lanky, but well-built with a kind of wiry strength. He was being jeered at and questioned by the crowd around him. He looked as though he wanted to speak, but couldn’t have been heard over the crowd around him, so rather than try, he waited.

There were many people, all the people in the town, it almost felt to Elspeth, but he didn’t seem afraid. He seemed steady and sure, and unbowed. He seemed…patient?

Elspeth found the baker’s daughter, and asked her what was going on.

“He’s English,” she said. “He stayed last night at the inn, and only spoke very little, and the innkeeper didn’t notice. But this morning he was speaking more, and now we know what he is.”

“And what is he?” Elspeth asked, bristling.

The baker’s daughter was taken aback, not expecting this reaction.

“He’s…he’s English. He might be a spy?”

Elspeth looked at the man, drinking him in with her eyes. A spy? He didn’t seem shifty-eyed or disingenuous. She would imagine spies were creatures who hid in the darkness and slithered away to betray. This man, whatever he might do, would never slither.

“Wait!” Elspeth yelled out, with a firmness to her voice that surprised her. “Everyone, please, be quiet!”

The general clamor of the crowd decreased, but wasn’t gone. She called again.

“Please, everyone, close your yapping mouths! I want to hear what he has to say!”

He was looking at her now. Everyone was looking at her, yes, but he was looking at her.

“Well?” she said, quietly. Too quietly to be heard, almost. But he heard her.

“I’m English, it is true,” he said. His voice was measured, and his accent was English, but a much softer, much less angular English than the soldiers in the woods last night.

“But I’m not a spy. I owe no loyalty to the English, and I don’t intend to help them. I intend to help you.”

The hubbub from the crowd began again. Wild speculation. Expressions of mistrust. Elspeth was about to yell again, but she found she didn’t need to. A few men from the crowd were interested in the taking over that particular duty.

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