Page 18 of Once Charmed, Twice Cursed
“I don’t. Want to know. That’s not what I’m here for.” He sounds almost frantic. “I shouldn’t be kissing you, or touching you, or getting anywhere near you. I shouldn’t even belookingat you. I just need your help, and once that’s done, I’ll deliver you back to your life.Withyour Mark intact.”
My blood cools. Silence piles between us. “Oh,” I finally say.
“Fortuna’s curses, I’m so incredibly sorry. And thank you. For coming to your senses. Before it would’ve been too late. I... Goddess, I have no excuse. I just...” He buries his face in his hands and releases a shuddering breath.
I wait, but he doesn’t seem inclined to continue, so I glance around. Shadows lie thick in the clearing. Off to the right, a smudge of light glows through the trees. It might be a lantern, or a candle in a window.
“It’s fine,” I say.
He grunts a denial, clearly having no idea of just how much I mean that.
I rub at my arms. “Maybe you should show me what you need help with?”
Jack takes a measured breath and pivots. “Right. Yes.”
He’s a man of few words, I decide, because he unharnesses the horses and turns them loose in silence. He takes my trunk down from the carriage like it weighs nothing, then inclines his head to indicate I make my way into the trees.
I can’t see much, but I follow the beckoning light, since there don’t seem to be any other options. Pine branches snag my hems, and I wonder where we are. Probably halfway between my estate and the duke’s, if I had to guess. Ten or so miles from Pine’s End.
Not that it matters. We’re ranged too far into the woods for me to run, though I wouldn’t have, anyway. I have nothing to go back to, at the moment. Nothing besides misery and servitude.
The distant light brightens. We emerge into a clearing rimmed by shadowy bracken, where a stone-walled cabin awaits, tidy and adorable. A candle glows in one window, burned almost all the way down. Two doors occupy opposite ends of the building, while the shingled roof looks to be in good repair.
Jack motions me toward the left-hand entrance.
I make my way over and hold the door for him, seeing as how he’s lugging my trunk. He grunts in acknowledgment, then edges around me in a way that inspires me to sniff at my armpits.
I don’t smell, though. At least not that I can tell.
Inside, Jack sets my trunk at the foot of a bed that looks sturdy and inviting, if simple. The white bedding gleams in the light of the sentinel candle.
I take the place in. A quaint table and two chairs occupy the space by the window, opposite a corner hearth that looks remarkably pristine. A generous bookshelf sits against the wall, almost comically large, because the room proves far smaller than expected. The cabin’s exterior isn’t exactly grandiose, but it didn’t suggestthislevel of coziness, either. Then I realize.
“The door,” I say.
Jack takes my measure. I wish I could determine his eye color, but in the candlelight, everything takes on the same wan shade of gold. “What about it?” he says.
“Theotherdoor, I mean. Where is it?”
Something flickers across what little I can see of his face. It might be appreciation, or simply a trick of the light. Or of the mask. “There’re two sides,” he says. “They don’t connect.”
“Oh.” I do another sweep of the room. It’s cute. Clean. How strange that it’s walled off from the other half. “And what do you need my help with, exactly? Not keeping house, from what I can tell.”
“No.” His jaw flexes. “There’s a woman. In the other room. She took ill a few weeks ago with the flu, and it’s taken a turn. A bad one. She doesn’t have much hope at the moment, but I’m hoping you can fix that.”
I blink. “She got the flu inSeptember?”
His shoulders tighten. “Back in August, actually. She’d been...spending time with me. So.” Coldness coats his gravelly words.
I press my lips together, not needing him to elaborate. Clearly, he blames himself—and his ill-fated luck—for this woman’s condition.
Then my thoughts hit a snag and go tumbling. “Wait. This woman…she’s not your wife, is she?”
Nausea snakes up my throat. Did I just force a married man into an out-of-control make-out session? Did I betray this poor woman while she’s dy?—
“No.” Jack bites the word off clean at the end. “I’d never inflict myself on anyone in that capacity. So...no. You don’t have to worry about that.”
Relief washes through me, muddled with dismay that he thinks of himself as something that can beinflicted. “Oh. Okay.”
