Milady by Laura L. Sullivan

Author:Laura L. Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

• • •

For another three days, I tried without success to get him alone. Even a moment would do, to stoke the fire. I could whisper my name, give him something to cry out in his solitary cell at night. I could pretend not to see him, and softly sing a country song of love and heartbreak. I could slip him a note, bold and incriminating to have evidence in my own handwriting, but it would give him something tangible to kiss, and he could imagine it carried my scent (lye and sweat, at that time).

But whether through his will or happenstance, no maneuvering of mine succeeded in getting us alone together for even the space of a breath.

He would make more of an effort if I could fix myself up, I thought. My ragamuffin hair was covered by my coif, but the golden tendrils I coaxed out at my temples and the nape of my neck would make him envision bountiful skeins flowing down my back if I ever removed it. I had no cosmetics, but my skin had cleared, and I touched my lashes with soot, and bit my lips to redness whenever there was a chance of seeing him. My cheeks were rosy enough from the cold to not need pinching. The rough habit and thin smock beneath it made me look like a shapeless sack, but when the Reverend Mother or her minions weren’t looking, I could cinch my belt in to show off my figure. I had done all for my beauty that I could.

Except bathe fully. If only I could be thoroughly clean all over, he would not be able to resist me. After that good start in the crypt, I believed that it would only take one more rendezvous to secure his promise of help.

Connie told me I was being silly. “My stepfather went so far as to instruct me to bathe less. He would root about my body like a suckling piglet, sniffing and snorting. Do you really think the priest shuns you because you have not had a bath? None of us have. When all stink, none stink.”

It was easier to have a scapegoat, and I felt less a failure when I could blame my lack of success on my lack of a full tub. I began to despair . . .

And then, when the snow showed the first signs of melting, on the first day of March, spring launched its most concerted attack on winter. Purple clouds tumbled across the sky, rumbling like bilious gods, and the heavens opened up in torrential rain. Biblical rain! It washed the snow away, and turned the world that I could see through the arrow-slit windows into slush, then mud. I cursed the elements, thinking the priests would be able to travel home, now that the snow was gone. But the rain never stopped. I heard the sisters say the land was now even more impassable because of the rain. It would swallow a man and a mule up more swiftly than snow.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.