Page 63 of Cora
Eventually, he took pity and thudded down the wood planks.
A shadow moving across the rectangle of light captured her hunger-clouded attention. Bella’s eyes widened, the lids scraping over her dry corneas, as the outline of a man moved stealthily down the steps.
She was hallucinating.
She had gone without food for so long that she was conjuring him. Hawke. The man who had sent her running, supposedly to safety, into the waiting arms of her enemies.
Belatedly, Gibface saw that her attention was riveted elsewhere. Bella ducked her head, but it was too late. The shadow moved fast. He whipped a wire around Gibface’s neck and pulled it taut before her captor could make a sound. He wheezed and gasped, clutching at his throat. Bella could see how deeply it was indented into his skin. She felt nothing. No remorse. Only a fleeting sense of satisfaction that a monster like him was meeting his end in a violent fashion.
Seconds stretched into minutes. His choked protests diminished, then faltered. Still Hawke held the wire taut. Gibface’s meaty hand fell to the dirt floor.
Still, he held firm.
I don’t think I would have had the resolve to see it through, had I tried it.There had been a time, once, when she’d been determined to garotte a man. But someone beat her to the punch with poison.
Biddy Ross.
Gibface’s body collapsed face-down in the dirt at her feet. Bella swallowed around a dry throat. Suddenly, revenge was no longer theoretical.
“God, Bella.” Hawke’s raw whisper conveyed everything.
“Don’t look at me,” she pleaded, turning her face between her bound arms. “Go away. I can handle this.”
He huffed quietly. A condemnation that sliced clear to her bones. Bella became suddenly aware of the stench she had forgotten how to smell, of her filthy hair plastered to her skull, her stained rag of a dress hanging off her wasted frame.
Hawke didn’t waste breath arguing with her. He sliced the fraying rope. For the first time in months, she could move her hands freely. Her shoulders ached. Her neck cracked, but at last, she was free.
Heedless of the filth, he scooped her into his arms. His touch seared through her. Even before her extended captivity, Bella had not allowed a man to touch her since her husband’s death.
She thought she had had enough of male touch to last her a lifetime.
She was wrong.
She had never hungered for human contact the way she did now.
Utterly spent, Bella buried her face in Hawke’s neck and wept.
“I’m going to murder you, you know,” she murmured as tears summoned from the depths of her soul—God knew her body contained not a drop of moisture to spare—dampened his collar. He smelled like soap and starch and man.
Shame swept through her like a wildfire. Out of control.
Non lasciare mai che ti umilino.Never let them shame you.
For once, her mentor’s advice offered no protection from searing humiliation.
“Later, Bella. You can kill me as many times as you want to, once you’re safe.”
He carried her into the light.
CHAPTERTHIRTY
CORA
The evening of her recital, Cora smoothed her claret-colored silk gown and peered nervously out from behind the curtains. Gideon was somewhere in the audience awaiting his turn to introduce her while the opening act, a quartet, performed.
Her mother-in-law eyed her dress with a frown.
“Your face will stick that way if you keep scowling.”
