The Wolf's Name by Raelyn Teague

Author:Raelyn Teague
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Outland Entertainment
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

— CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE —

MATILDA

Keith, you fool. You left the door open.”

“No,” came a rasping voice—male, but high pitched and younger than the other. “I— I know I covered it up. You must have opened it again!”

The romp of Irish tones neared, and Matilda cowered from the shaft of sunlight falling on her head. They’ll kill us.

“Quickly.” She scurried about the cellar. “Hide!”

Chains. Crumpled paper. Dust and broken glass. Where could she possibly hide?

“What does it matter anyway?” came that raspy voice again. The other one had called him Keith. “There’s nobody in these woods but that drunkard.”

Wood creaked under a worn leather boot. Clumps of dirt and stray pebbles clacked down the stairs. Matilda grabbed Lucky’s hand and spilled the notes under her arm.

Nathaniel’s journal tumbled with them.

Matilda lunged for the book, but Lucky tightened his hand around hers and dragged her behind the stairs.

But the journal!

The steep incline of the stairs left barely room for two behind them. Wood dug into Matilda’s arm and cheek. Lucky hunched over her, pinned between her and the wall. His heartbeat pounded against her shoulder and matched pace with the scamper of her own.

The older Fenian thumped down the stairs and almost stepped on Matilda’s nose. His wide, stinking feet connected to ankles built for a giant of a man.

“Look at this mess.” His voice boomed, gritty, and his accent ran thicker than even her father’s had. It shaped the words until Matilda barely understood them. “You let in a windstorm.”

“Sorry, Isaac,” Keith said.

Keith’s accent came watered down, the Irish gambol almost gone. A young man who’d spent more of his life in the New World than on the Emerald Isle. His feet trudged lighter down the steps, and the limp carcass of a hare swayed at his hip.

“My notes!” Isaac lifted his toes off the scattered pages and frowned at the muddy boot print he’d stamped over the ink.

“They’re here, aren’t they?” Keith said, more defensive than glib.

“Does a book make sense with the pages all scrambled? Get the lantern, lad, and clean it up.”

Their backs to Matilda, the two men stripped off their coats and freed the rank smell of week-old sweat. Willowy with youth but every bit as rugged as Isaac, Keith crouched by the notes and helped the older man sweep the pages into a pile. Matilda tried to turn her head to look for Nathaniel’s journal on the floor but couldn’t get the right angle.

“Ah!” Keith snapped his hand back with a cry. He plucked a fragment of glass out of his skin and pressed the wound to his mouth. “The lantern broke.”

Isaac smacked the other man on the arm. “That’s the second one!”

“There’s still one left,” Keith muttered.

He moved behind the table, rustling and clinking. A light sparked to life and flooded the room from corner to corner, leaving rectangles of yellow on Matilda where it sneaked between the cellar steps. She pushed away from the light but could sink no deeper into Lucky. She shut her eyes and prayed.

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.