One of Us Buried by Johanna Craven (year 2 reading books TXT) 📕

that blood had likely come from the rebel uprising at Castle Hill. But how could I believe the word of Patrick Owen, who had wrung Maggie’s throat and left her lifeless in the undergrowth? How could I let Owen stain my image of this man who had been so good to me? Perhaps Lottie was right; I had been blinded. But I didn’t want my sight returned.

I pushed Patrick Owen from my mind. I didn’t want him in the hut with us.

Blackwell reached for my hand and held it in both of his. He turned it over in the lamplight as though it were the most fragile of specimens. The contact made my heart thunder. He looked at my hand closely, the faintest of frowns on his forehead, as though he had never seen a woman’s fingers up so close before.

Had he ever seen his wife’s body, I found myself wondering? Had he ever cast his eyes over the female form in its entirety? In my head, Sophia Blackwell was the kind of meek and submissive lover who hid beneath the covers and slid her shift to her hips. Sophia Blackwell, if she were here, would be labelled wife.

I wanted to challenge him. Wanted to break through that cursed shield he hid behind. I wanted to see how far I could push him, how much power I had. Here, in this lamplight, with lust in a man’s eyes, was the only place a woman had the upper hand. Playing on his desires was the only way to make a man weak. I had to take control any way I could.

I rose to my feet, bringing Blackwell with me. Slowly, I unbuttoned my dress and stepped out of it, letting it fall to the floor with a sigh. I stood before him in my underskirts, my shoulders ghostly white in the candlelight. I could feel his eyes moving over every inch of me.

He took a step closer. Pressed his palm to the top of my arm. I heard myself inhale, sharp and loud. His hand felt rough against my skin. The hut rustled and creaked around us.

I tilted my head, offering him the bare white slope of my neck. Up his fingers went, over the protrusion of my collarbone, over my throat, pushing aside the flaming snarls of hair, tracing the constellation of freckles on my cheeks. His other hand went to my hip, feeling the shape of me.

Fingers slid along my collarbone, pausing at the top of my stays. I heard his breath. Fast. Shallow. Or perhaps it was my own.

At the feel of him against me, it went past my need for power. Now it was about my need for him. I was burning beneath his touch.

His hand was motionless, his thumb resting on the laces of my stays, and two fingers held against the place my heart was beating. He breathed heavily, caught in hesitation.

“No one would ever know,” I said, trying to wrestle this back to a thing of power. But my skin was hot and my heart was beating between my legs. Blackwell had the control now, and I cursed myself for it.

But even as I spoke, I knew it was not a matter of who in the colony would see. God would know; would see him break his marriage vows; would see him lie with a woman who was not his wife. He would become an adulterer. And I would become a concubine.

I stepped away, leaving Blackwell’s hand hovering in the dark space between us. I felt cold and hollow. But I could not be what Reverend Marsden had accused us of being. I picked up my dress and held it tight against me. I felt ashamed of my boldness, of all I had tried to do.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. I wondered why he was the one apologising.

Blackwell moved quietly across the hut. He blew out the candle, leaving me standing alone in the blackness.

    

PART TWO

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Nell Marling,” the superintendent barked. I looked up from the spinning wheel. “You’re to go with Corporal Anderson.” He nodded towards the sunburned young soldier dithering at the top of the stairs. “You’re being assigned. Housekeeper to Mr Robert Leaver. You’ll be escorted to his property shortly. He has a room ready for you.”

I swallowed. “A room?”

The superintendent chuckled. “I trust that’s to your liking.”

I traipsed down the stairs behind the soldier, feeling stupidly unsteady.

Had Blackwell had a hand in this? I couldn’t tell.

I looked back over my shoulder as I climbed down the staircase from the factory. A place that, for all its horrors, had become strangely comfortable in its familiarity. The life I had scratched together here – days at the spinning wheels, nights on Blackwell’s floor – was something I knew I could cope with. But here I was facing the unknown again.

It was almost a relief to be leaving the stool beside Lottie. In the three days since Owen had manhandled me to the river, we had barely exchanged a word. Each night as I’d left the factory and walked back towards Blackwell’s hut, I could feel her eyes on me. Once, I’d thought to call out to her, make some attempt at resurrecting our friendship. But it felt like the time for that had passed. It had disappeared the night Owen had dragged me from the hut and told me lies about Castle Hill.

Or perhaps it had disappeared on Christmas night when I had shown the colony the way my heart sped for Adam Blackwell.

My new overseer, Robert Leaver, was waiting outside the factory. The soldier escorting me squinted as he read from the crumpled paper in his hand.

“Eleanor Marling, sir. Twenty-eight, childless, healthy.”

Leaver was a short man with a wide, sun-streaked forehead and pale tufts of