Like the Down of a Thistle: A Historical Lesbian Romance (Love and Thorns Book 1) by Sarah Swan

Author:Sarah Swan [Swan, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 1700s, Adventure, Dark, Drama, Historical, Lesbian Romance, Thriller
Goodreads: 57452129
Published: 2021-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Florie followed me, clutching her doll as we trudged back over the pasture to our own croft. When we were about halfway there, she ran up beside me and took hold of my skirt.

“Where are we going to sleep, Mammy?” she asked.

I took a quick look down at her and sighed. She stared back up at me with wide eyes, trusting that I would know exactly what to do. I really didn’t, but I couldn’t let her know that.

“Well, we’re going to take these blankets and lay them out under the sheep shelter after we sweep it out and put down some hay—” I cut myself off. We had no hay. It had burned in the barn. “Grass.” I corrected myself.

There was some grass under the shelter already, but even though the sheep had not congregated under it for two or three weeks, it was still very patchy, dirty and sparse. I wanted a fresh layer to cover where we would sleep, since I didn’t like the idea of bedding down where twenty-six sheep had previously defecated and urinated, even if we did have a blanket to lie on.

We spent the rest of the morning cleaning up the floor of the shelter as much as we could. Since the long handled broom had burned in the barn, this took a long time. We used the short brush which had been salvaged from the cupboard in the kitchen, but it was backbreaking work. I made a mental note to stop the sheep from coming inside for the rest of the summer, if this was where we would have to sleep now. If there was a bad storm, they would have to be directed to the shelter on Katherine’s croft.

The building had three walls and was open at the front, so it provided a fair bit of protection from the wind and elements, especially if we slept at the back. Once it was properly swept out, I took Florie down to the river and together we pulled up bunches of long reeds and grass from the river bank. We laid them out in the sun to dry as we gathered a sufficient amount, then, after a couple of hours of back-and-forthing, we managed to cover a small patch of the floor, in the back corner of the shelter, which we spread a blanket over.

I lay down on it and smiled up at Florie, quite surprised.

“This is actually quite comfortable,” I said, silently thinking I should have done something similar in Katherine’s cottage. The long reeds were thickly laid and the ground underneath was far softer than the compacted dirt floor of the cottage. Florie lay down on the bed beside me and I put my arm around her, cuddling her close.

“I’m so sorry it has come to this,” I whispered to her.

“It’s not your fault, Mammy, Ailig is mean,” she said.

“He is that,” I sighed.

“I feel sorry for Katherine,” Florie said. “I’d rather sleep here like this, than live in that cottage with him.

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