Page 48 of The Nightshade's Bride
I was happy to be hidden in the shadows.
The relief when the gates clanged shut behind the Bishop and Gideon was immense, and for the rest of that day we had peace.
Could this peace continue?
The next day I was sent with detailed instructions out into the trees and woods surrounding the Abbey to find more herbs. How strange it was that my husband killed people for a living, while I was being trained to heal.
Despite the winter wind the forest around the Abbey was very pleasant, and I poked around in the crooks and bends of the gnarled old trees for the proper herbs.
After my cheeks were rosy, I sat down on a nearby bench and sighed in contentment. It was chilly, with snowflakes beginning to drift from the sky, but I had warm woolen socks and warm woolen wraps from the sisters.
In my warm mittened hands was a bag with fragrant winter herbs I had picked, and even over the hills I could smell the stew in Brother Bartholomew's cottage.
What a tender, kind man he was, to lie so badly but wrap me up with such gentle hands, and to cook his own meals instead of having a servant to do it. He reminded me of my own dear Papa.
I was just about to get up and follow my nose when two big hands, the veins pulsing with a raw red power, gripped the barsof the fence around the Abbey, and I once again heard the low gritty voice of the man who had seduced and tricked me into marriage.
"Deliverance. . .Deliverance. . . mercy! Come home to me!”
And Gideon fell against the bars with a strange, wracking oath.
CHAPTER 20
Gideon
The moment I was escorted from the grounds of St. Mary's by that lickspittle Bishop, an unfamiliar, disorienting emotion wracked my body as the heavy iron gates clanged shut behind me.
Bleak and utter despair
To leave without my wife was unacceptable. She wasmyproperty. Carryingmychild.
Rage clouded my vision. Yet there were no tendrils of guilt creeping from around my blackened soul.
Guilt was for other men. Men who hadn't done what I had. Guilt was for weaklings. I was certainly strong enough to take Deliverance and force her to submit to my will, sowhat had happened?
What I was conscious of was a begrudging, angry pride in my wife’s stubbornness and skills.
How had Deliverance managed to escape me in the first place? How had she known how to navigate the moors? Where had she found the cart and buggy to escape in? How had she kept herself hidden? It was unthinkable.
And what the hell was I supposed to do now?
Earlier, I had torn home in a fury to find the marriage license, and raced hell-for-leather back, my horse and I both sweating even in the cold of winter, the shirt stuck to my skin with chill perspiration.
This was the document that should have provedIowned Deliverance. The Bishop & St. Mary's Abbey should have been turning the grounds inside-out for my disobedient wife.
How had that bastard monk managed to see through my story? Why was he looking so closely at thegodsdamnsignature?
How the fucking hell was I supposed to find the two-bit parish priest who had married me? He was probably in debtor’s prison or dead in a ditch somewhere.
When I was gently but firmly escorted off the property, I could only thinkwhat now?
I still had access to all of Deliverance's fortune. That had been the plan from the beginning. I had contacts across multiple counties. There would be benefits, perks, for the first one to deliver me what I needed.
A wealthy, vulnerable heiress. A source of enough money for the staggering amount I needed to restore Grayspires to her former glory.
I still had all I needed to repair my home.
But I didn’t have Deliverance.
