The Legend of the Gypsy Hawk by Sally Malcolm

Author:Sally Malcolm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, contemporary, romance, adventure, pirate, swashbuckling
Publisher: Choc Lit
Published: 2015-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

He took her to a brothel, rapping twice on the rickety door, and all Amelia could think was, Please hurry, please let us in.

She was frozen to the marrow of her bones. Her left ankle shot agony along the length of her leg and Zach had been helping her to walk for at least half an hour. Hunger was a fist in her belly and her head throbbed, as it had for weeks, for the want of food and water.

A narrow-faced woman appeared, glanced at Zach with a sour expression, and cracked the door just far enough to admit them. ‘One hour,’ she said, her accent like the scrape of dry rocks. ‘Any longer and I’m fetching the bleedin’ coppers m’self.’

Zach pushed open the door with one hand, his other arm tight about Amelia’s waist, keeping her upright. ‘Everything is as I asked?’

‘Course. Now hurry up. I’ll not swing for ya, Zach Hazard.’

Her dragging left foot caught on the threshold and Amelia stumbled hard, clamping her jaw shut to keep from crying out. Zach’s arm tightened about her waist.

‘Upstairs,’ the shrew-faced woman said. ‘First room on the right.’

Amelia coughed as they moved through the dim corridor, the air thick with the groundnut scent of opium. She breathed deep, hoping it might dull the pain.

‘None of that,’ Zach warned. ‘Need your wits, Amy.’

‘Not much use if I can’t walk.’

He didn’t answer, just led her towards the room to which they’d been directed and shoved open the door. Inside, mercifully, a small fire had been lit in the grate. A filthy-looking bed dominated the room, upon which sprawled a ragged dress that may once have been red. A thin shawl lay next to it. The clothes couldn’t hold Amelia’s attention, however, once she’d seen the loaf of bread that sat on a small table near the window. Two bowls next to it were filled with a greasy-looking stew. To Amelia, it seemed the finest feast she’d ever eaten, and she fell upon the food, sopping the bread into the gravy and shoving it into her mouth.

Zach watched her in silence after helping her to sit on the single chair at the table. He peered into the second bowl and wrinkled his nose, before shoving it towards her and heading to the window, gazing out into the alley below. ‘It’s quiet,’ he muttered, and then turned back to her. ‘What’s wrong with your leg?’

‘I fell. In the battle.’ Amid the fire and the flames and the dying.

Zach moved around the table and knelt to examine her ankle, lifting her booted foot onto his knee. ‘Not broken.’

‘No.’ He set her foot back down and the lance of pain turned her stomach despite her hunger and she sucked in a breath.

He looked up at her, his expression more guarded than she remembered. ‘Is it bound?’

Amelia shook her head.

‘That will help. So will the rum, but not ’til we’re somewhere safer. Can you bear it?’

‘I bear greater wounds than this.’

He held her eye for a moment, though she could read nothing in his dark gaze.

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