Page 21 of Once Charmed, Twice Cursed
Chapter Eight
That night, I dream of Weston.
It’s not a pleasant experience, like my usual nocturnal imaginings of him. This dream is raw and painful, brimming with accusation.
We’re at the cotton mill, right back in Calder’s office, only this time, Weston has me caged against the wall. He leans close, his hands planted to either side of my head.
“You kissed him,” he hisses. “A man whokidnappedyou. How could you? Don’t I mean anything to you?”
It’s something Weston would never say, and that alone tells me I’m dreaming. Which frees me to unleash the full brunt of my frustration.
“Of course you do,” I snap. “You’re all I ever wanted, you ridiculous ass. Which is exactly why I kissed Jack. Because I’m sick to death of you refusing to touch me, of wondering endlessly what you would feel like. I kissed him because I needed to do anything besides want and want and want you all the time. I kissed him because I needed to forget you.”
Weston’s lip curls. He’s angry. That much, at least, is trueto life. “I guess you’re going to tell me that’s why you kissed Theodore, too? Why you gave yourself to someone who isn’t even worthy of hearing you breathe?”
“Of course I am.” My chin rises, and he leans closer, as if magnetized. “I let Theodore take whatever he wanted from me, just so I could feel something. But you know what? I didn’t think about him once. I tried, but all I could think about was someone else.”
Weston’s glare deepens, a lethal amber glint in the shadows. “Who? Who else?”
I glare right back. Fortuna, sometimes I just want to hit him. Most of the time, actually. “You already know.”
His tongue slides over his bottom lip. “Maybe. Maybe I do. But you know I can’t let you waste yourself on me.”
My control frays, and I reach for him. The fact that he thinks of it that way, as a waste instead of a mutual gift, cracks my anger down the middle. But the meager distance proves uncrossable. It swells and swells, my fingers catching at empty air.
I can’t let you waste yourself on me.
His words echo until I’m falling into them, and then I’m spiraling upward, pulled into awareness by the hack and scrape of someone fighting for breath.
My eyes flutter open. I startle at first, unsure of where I am, but then it all rushes back. I sit up. In the other room, someone is coughing themselves into oblivion.
I ease from bed, anchoring my hands to the wall, and pad along until I’m directly opposite the sound. I flatten my body to the stone, lending the poor woman as much of my lucky bubble as I can.
Her coughing dwindles. A few rattling breaths lance into her lungs, and she quiets. Sheets rustle.
I hope she’s able to get comfortable.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say to the wall. “I’m going to make sure you get better.”
If she hears me, she doesn’t say anything. I stand there for what feels like an hour while the chilled rock pulls the warmth from my bones. Last night, I dug a nightgown out of my trunk—a gift from the duke, finely woven and softer than butter—but the silk proves too thin to insulate me.
When I start to shiver, I peel myself away and go to the fireplace.
The ashes should be long cold, considering dawn’s light is peeking through the window and no one has fed the fire since last night.
But a tiny pocket of embers glows at the back. The moment I nudge it with a stick of kindling, flames burst to life.
I blink. Jack must not be nearby.
Within minutes, I have a crackling fire going. I hang a kettle of porridge over the flames and add a splash of the milk I brought in from the coldbox last night.
Then I stand before the merry fire and frown. There wereeightbottles out there, and little else. Which, in any other circumstances, I would ascribe to my luck, but Jack shouldn’t be affected by that. It’s almost like he knew.
A thud jars me from my ruminations.
I glance around to find a book splayed on the floor, fallen from the bookcase. When I move closer, I see that it’s my favorite. An adventure tale, about a woman who assumes a man’s identity and joins a pirate crew, only to fall in love withevery sailor aboard. She ultimately reveals her true self and sails off into a life of crime and passion, now the treasured darling of twenty gifted lovers.
It’s utterly unrealistic, and I couldn’t adore it more. But I haven’t read it in years.
