Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
A va sat on the edge of the battlements and watched the light from an unseen moon shimmer a dim white glow over the velvety black sky. All her thoughts had unknotted, thanks to working in the kitchens and talking with Farlan. The seneschal had a way about him that made him seem like an older, protective brother. Ava liked him well enough, but she had always been an only child. No, the one clansman she suspected would suit her as a friend didn’t seem all that friendly. She’d also noted how much he preferred to be alone, and how he’d avoided her. It was almost as if they were mirrors to each other, mirrors they didn’t want to look into and see themselves.
Well, maybe that war master will stop hating on me someday. He’s almost like me and Rory, except he’s still fighting it.
The door behind her creaked, but she didn’t react by bracing herself or glancing back. She knew who it was when she caught the scent of shadowy moss along with burnt charcoal and metal. Since everyone except the laird, Darro, and Alec seemed afraid of the big armorer, maybe Rory would enjoy a moment when he wasn’t scaring the daylights out of other folks.
“Sorry if I’m in your spot,” Ava mentioned as he came to stand beside her. “Darro told me how I could see most of the trap from here. He mentioned you like to sit up here at night, too.”
“Chieftain likes to talk,” Rory whispered.
The stone under her palms vibrated slightly, as if proof of Darro’s claim that the armorer’s voice could make the whole castle crumble.
“If I bother you the same way I do your war master, I’ll stay clear of you.” As she glanced at him he moved his roof-beam shoulders. “All right, then I’ll pester you a bit. Why don’t you ever come to the hall to eat with everyone?”
“I’m busy.” He glanced at her face and his lips twisted. “I cannae make conversation with my brothers.”
That sounded true enough, but Ava sensed they were excuses. She also saw the shadows in his eyes that made her think of the ghosts of the past that still haunted her.
“I don’t think anyone would expect you to make small talk, but I understand,” she said slowly. “It’s all I can do to sit down at Tasgall’s table every morning and night.”
Rory gave her a puzzled look.
“In my world I was the same as you. I ate alone. I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t socialize, and I never made small talk.” She smiled a little. “The other agents thought I was snooty and kept to myself because I came from a wealthy family.”
He grunted as if he were contemptuous of that assumption.
“I wanted to tell them the truth.” She thought she wasn’t ashamed of that, but she had been. Keeping quiet about her past had been the only way to protect herself; not even Chris had known about what she’d gone through as a kid. “My family were dirt poor, and I grew up with nothing in just about the worst place you can live.”
The armorer regarded her for a long moment, as if expecting her to say more. At the same time she sensed he didn’t expect her to. Ava didn’t like revealing anything about her dismal childhood and the abuse she’d suffered; she didn’t want anyone’s pity. At the same time she sensed the big man would never repeat a word she said, and not just because he couldn’t talk above a whisper.
“Only folks with hardly anything lived where we did,” Ava admitted. “Not all of them were bad, but my parents were, and some of the neighbors were. Real bad.”
She found herself talking about the time when she’d walked home from school in a terrible rainstorm, and the old man who had tried to drag her into his trailer. Before that day she’d seen him watching her from his windows, and bit and kicked him to escape. She hadn’t told her parents, as she was afraid they’d blame her, but she found another way to walk to and from school. A few weeks after that the police had arrested him for molesting another girl even younger than Ava, and his lengthy list of past crimes against children came to be known.
“That’s the reason that I never like to be touched by strangers.” The weight of the past seemed to grind down on her. “But because I came from a place where sex offenders like that man lived, I was treated like I was dirty and disgusting, too. None of the other kids ever wanted me as a friend or to join in the things they did. I was a good kid, and kept myself clean, but that didn’t matter to them. I’d always be trash.”
Suddenly two huge hands clamped around her waist, startling her as the armorer lifted her off the wall and then set her on her feet. Rory snatched back his hands, as if startled by what he’d just done.
“Don’t worry. You and me, we’re not strangers.” Hoping he wouldn’t snap any of her bones, Ava spread her arms. “You ever need a hug, I always got one for you.”
The armorer went still for a long moment, and then he folded her into a careful, gentle embrace. He was so big compared to her it was like being engulfed by a half-dozen sun-warmed blankets in which someone had sewed a bunch of river stones. Yet as Ava held him she realized he was trembling, almost as if he were fearful, and then she understood.
He is. He’s afraid to be close to others because he thinks he’ll hurt them.
“Thank you, kind sir.” She patted his back as her heart lightened. “I know it’s easier to step away and stay on your own. If you don’t let anyone close, they can’t hurt you.” She drew back enough to meet his gaze. “Only you and I know that’s near about the hardest way to live.”
He released her, and the haunted look came back into his eyes.
“Like I said, my folks were real bad. People that think nothing of beating little girls, letting them go hungry, or working them until they drop. I never let that blacken my heart or change me into one of them.” She looked out at the dark horizon. “That would let them win, you know?”
“Aye.” He moved to stand beside her, and looked for a moment as if he might say more.
“Me telling you doesn’t mean you have to tell me,” Ava assured him. “But if you need to talk to someone who will never judge you, you come find me, you hear?”
Rory nodded.
A lec watched as the clan’s most solitary member escorted the newcomer from the battlements back inside the tower, but waited another long moment before he stepped out of the shadows. He was almost sure that Rory had known he was there listening, and wondered why he hadn’t warned Ava about him.
He wished me to hear what she said.
Pondering that should have allowed him to avoid experiencing shame over how badly he had treated the agent, but it didn’t. Too much of what she had said brought back bad memories of his own in a deluge. As he left the tower and made his way back to his bed chamber, he went through the calming thoughts that Ben had taught him to use whenever his anxiety swelled into panic.
I’m safe here. I’m surrounded by those who care for me. There’s enough food, and water to drink and bathe. No one shall ever again chain me like an animal in the dark and forget about me.
Standing outside his chamber was a dark-haired wench whose name escaped him. Since she held a bucket of splits he wondered why she hadn’t gone in to stoke his hearth, and then he caught a trace of an odd scent coming from her. It reminded him of something from long ago, but he couldn’t quite place it.
“Go in,” he told her.
“Thank you, War Master.” She bobbed before she opened the door and went to kneel in front of the banked fire, her reddened lips smiling as if the task delighted her.
Alec suspected she might fling herself at him before she left. All the females inside the spell trap except the chatelaine and the little dark-skinned maid had done the same over the centuries. He had never been tempted by any of them until Ava came into the trap. That she made him want her against his own will angered him still, but now that he understood her better he knew he could dispense with that pointless lust. Suddenly he recalled that the dark-haired maid stoking the flames was a newcomer who served as an under gardener and had no business doing maid’s work.
“Why came you here? The truth, ” he demanded.
“I wanted to talk to you in private, so I asked Elspeth if I could bring the wood,” the maid said after she finished building the fire. She came to stand right in front of him and reached out to walk her fingers up his chest. “I know a secret about that newcomer gal that you should hear.”
He stopped her from touching his face and pushed her hand away. “Then tell me.”
“What’ll you give me if I do? If you need a hint, I’ll show you what I have in mind.” She took a step closer, and then scowled when he stepped back from her. “What’s the matter with you, anyway? You some kind of virgin? Or do you screw boys, like everyone says?”
“I’ve naught for you. Go now.” Weary, he turned his back on her.
“You don’t have to put on an act with me, you gorgeous hunk.” The wench came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “You know you want some nice hot pussy, just like all the other fellows do. I can tell every time you look at me, you’re imagining me naked.”
Alec couldn’t remember ever once glancing her way these past two years. Even on the day she’d come into the spell trap he had only asked her a few questions before he realized what a vacuous, empty-headed trollop she was. He knew she had offered herself discreetly to a number of guards since coming to them, and currently bedded one of the other gardeners.
He pulled her arms apart, took hold of her wrist tightly, and marched her over to the door. When he opened it she turned toward him, cupping one of her breasts and massaging it as she pouted at him.
“I’ll let you do whatever you want,” she said, whispering the words. “You can put it in my backside, and I won’t stop you. Come on, Alec. If you like boys so much, give it a try. Besides, what girl here would let you fuck her that way?”
The leer that accompanied her lascivious suggestion repelled him; it was as if she had made the same offer to every other reluctant man she’d encountered in the past.
“If I wished such a liberty, ’tis a dozen ladies among us who favor such attention,” Alec told her. “Indeed, if I wished that, I’d fack them all for a thousand years before I’d bother to look at you.”
The open lust vanished from her expression, and she flounced out into the passage, turning as if to have the last word.
Alec slammed the door shut, dropped the bolt bar and heard her shriek an obscenity before her footsteps swiftly retreated.
He trudged over to his narrow bed and lay there staring at the ceiling rafters as his thoughts slowly unsnarled. He had long ago vowed never to take a lover, so the prospect of spending eternity as a celibate didn’t trouble him. When physical need nagged at him, he used his hand for release. All that the wench had done was fill his thoughts with dark desires that he would have to imagine satisfying.
Alec took a moment to strip off his trews and grimaced at the lack of enthusiasm his cock still demonstrated; the wench had completely soured him. Sighing and closing his eyes, he imagined the lover of his dreams coming into the trap.
She would be small and slight, with hair the color of autumn-turned leaves, and eyes as blue-green as a rain-filled fairy pool. Most of his brothers preferred lasses with skin like milk, but his lover would have golden skin covered with tiny freckles; that sort of skin always made him imagine kissing each tiny mark. Her voice would be low and sweet, and her touch gentle. She would smell of cream and peaches, aye, and even taste of them. He had never given her a name beyond dreòlan , the little wren of his dreams. When she came to him, she would disrobe before him, and offer herself without reservation or demand.
I’m yours, War Master. Do with me what you wish.
His disgust with the gardener wench slowly faded, replaced by the heated desire for his imaginary lover. Throughout the centuries he had imagined his dreòlan so many times he could number the freckles on her face and almost smell her scent. Now as his cock stiffened and swelled he gripped it in his hand as she might, tenderly and loosely before she began to stroke him.
I shall do whatever you desire, War Master. I wish to please you. Tell me.
He could see her now before him, kneeling as he guided her lips to his heavy cock. Putting himself inside her velvety soft mouth made his baws tighten and sent a surge of pounding blood into his groin. He wanted to thrust deep and jet into her throat, especially when she looked up at him with his cock sliding in between her lips.
I want to own you, wench, he told her as he drew out of her mouth, and pulled her to her feet. You shall be mine and mine alone. You shall wait by my bed every night until I come to you. You shall be naked and ready to take me however I wish fack you. You shall wait for your pleasure until I choose give it to you. I shall bathe you in my cream, until you forget what ’tis not to wear it.
His dreòlan would not be shocked by his admission, for it would be the same for her. Indeed, she would beg for such from him. Imagining that sent him over the cliffs of longing into a warm sea of release that was somewhat empty but still satisfied him, for that was all he would ever have, and all he could ever give his unreal woman.
’Tis all because you own me, my cock, and my heart, my imaginary love.
T hat night Ava had a long dream, during which she relived Special Agent Christopher Harlow’s funeral. Just as it had in real life the service seemed to drag on and on. His mother had wept soundlessly into a lace handkerchief while his father had stared at nothing, looking up only when the Director presented him with the folded flag that had draped Chris’s coffin. All the other agents present kept watching Ava, expecting her to break down and sob, which made keeping her composure even harder. She had never dreamed about this day once and couldn’t understand why she was putting herself through it again. Finally, after they had lowered Chris’s remains into the ground and his parents had tossed in the ritual handful of soil, she hoped she’d wake up.
Only she didn’t. She had to go through the rest of the ordeal.
Are you pregnant?
After the funeral Ava had nearly made it to her car when Marion Harlow caught up with her. She’d grabbed her with her thin, veiny hand, latching onto her arm so tightly that Ava would find bruises there later.
Tell me he made you pregnant. I know you were sleeping together. Tell me right this minute, I have to know.
Ava understood that she wasn’t being nosy. Chris had been her only son, a late-life child, and at her age she had no hope of having any more biological children.
No, ma’am. I’m not pregnant. Although she didn’t like touching others, she knew what her lover would have done to comfort the old lady. She put her arm around the other woman’s stooped shoulders. I wish I was, more than anything in the world. I’m so sorry.
As Chris’s mother sobbed against her shoulder, Ava had looked into Richard Harlow’s bleak eyes, and knew he’d heard everything. Chris had adored his mother but had been even closer to his father, who had also worked for the Bureau, and had urged his son to join. No doubt he now blamed himself for that, and even if he didn’t, there were no words she could offer that could ever ease his pain. Gently she passed the woman over to her husband before she climbed into her car and left the cemetery.
In the seat next to her a rotting version of the man she’d loved sighed and patted her thigh as he looked out the passenger window at his parents.
It’s okay, Legs. Mom and Dad will come and join me in a few months, when they sit in the Mercedes and run the engine with the garage door closed. Dying of carbon monoxide poisoning isn’t so terrible. Chris turned to look at her, his face so destroyed by the gunshots that had killed him it looked like he wore a mask of ground beef. Not as bad as the way I went, huh?
Ava woke up, staggering out of bed before she ran for the privy. She made it just in time to throw up until she dry-heaved. After rinsing out her mouth and sitting for a bit, she rose and dressed in her own clothes, and then went to the window slit and looked out to see the night sky taking on a faint, greenish cast. The white lights in the garden from the restoring crystal flakes had all winked out, and she could see every bed had regrown what the clan had harvested yesterday, along with the weeds and even some withered, dying plants.
She turned around and leaned against the wall, recalling Chris with his whole, handsome face. Focusing on that helped her nausea recede and reminded her that, despite the nightmares, that was who her lover had been.
I still miss you, Touchdown.
Before she’d met Special Agent Christopher Harlow, Ava had never dated or even thought about it. Her reputation as trailer park trash had made that impossible during high school, and college had been a blur of part-time jobs and studying endless hours. Even when she’d been training to join the Bureau she’d convinced herself that she’d have no time for a personal life when she went to work.
Better to be alone than make a mess of it.
Ava had been assigned to Chris’s unit just after graduating Quantico, where she had expected to fill a trainee’s position of sitting at a desk and typing up the unit reports. Big, blonde and with the confidence of an ex-college quarterback, her new boss had a boyish grin and the kind of hazel eyes that shifted colors like shadows in a forest. His big paw had engulfed hers as they shook hands, but he had been careful not to bruise her. His gentle touch had made her notice their size difference, as few men outsized her long, lanky body. That awareness became almost acutely painful over the weeks that followed.
You can fill out the paperwork for HR later, Chris had told her that first day. Let’s go catch some bad guys.
He’d taken her out into the field with him that day and every other shift that followed, giving her immediate and valuable hands-on experience working a case. She’d laughed when she’d heard his nickname. Touchdown seemed so flamboyant, and yet it suited him perfectly. She didn't even mind him calling her Legs, as hers were longer than anyone else’s in the unit. From there she’d taken on participating in canvassing, interviews and surveillance, learning all of Chris’s tricks to keep a low profile in the field.
People are always going to look at you , Chris chided after having her wash off her makeup and pull her dark brown hair back in a loose ponytail. You’re striking, tall, and your legs go on forever. So quit trying to be the fairest one of all, Snow White, and just show them the bare minimum.
Ava had learned how to dress and behave to avoid notice and became skilled at extracting information from unwilling or hostile witnesses. After helping Chris arrest and charge a ring of thieves making millions from shoplifted goods, she had gone out to have a celebratory drink with him.
I’ve noticed that you never touch alcohol, Legs, he’d said after she ordered a ginger ale. Got a problem with it?
She shook her head. My parents did, and it killed them. Think of it as a good thing. I can be your designated driver any time you need one.
Will you come home with me tonight? Before she could answer he leaned closer and traced a fingertip along the edge of her jaw. Or maybe I should transfer you to another unit tomorrow. Not into sexual harassment on the job, Agent. It’s just… I don’t know if I can keep my hands off you much longer.
Good. Ava gestured to the bartender and handed him her credit card to pay the tab before she took Chris’s keys from him. Let’s go.
Everything after that had been a revelation for her, from the fantastic sex to the tender aftermath of cuddling. Chris had been startled to learn he was her first lover but assured her she was a natural. With him she had been, for she loved everything about him, and the way they clicked as partners inside and outside the bedroom seemed like some fantastic dream to her. They had been making plans to move in together when he’d been pulled to join a sting operation with a Miami task force trying to shut down a group of drug dealers selling bogus pharmaceuticals that were killing people all over the world.
I’ll see you in a couple weeks, Legs. Chris had kissed her when she’d dropped him at the airport. Find us a decent apartment while I’m gone, will you? I’m sick and tired of sleeping alone.
She had kissed him back and waved him off, never imagining that she’d get a call a week later from the task force chief, whose sting operation had imploded after an informant had been tortured and revealed everything. The drug dealers had ended up in a shoot-out with the field team, and Chris had been killed while protecting another agent. Then the letter had arrived, which her dead lover had written to her a day before he’d been shot to death.
I got a bad notion about this op, Ava. We’re taking all the proper precautions, but something isn’t setting well with me. Can’t figure out what it is, either. Maybe I’m wrong or getting old. Could be time for me to take that instructor job they offered me at Quantico.
Okay, so if I don’t come back, I want you to know you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Just beware that when I do come back, I’m going to marry you. Expect a ring with a big-ass diamond that I’ll be spending a few years paying off. Say yes, because you know I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you, right?
She had asked to be the one to do the notification, and that day had taken a plane to D.C. to tell Marion and Richard that their son had died. Richard knew the moment he opened the door, and he’d held himself together long enough to help her break the news to his wife. Ava, who had already shut down her emotions so completely she sounded like a robot to her own ears, had left after the couple’s minister arrived to comfort them. She saw them again at the funeral, and three months later was informed that the elderly couple had committed suicide together.
“All right, Christopher.” She had grieved deeply for him and his parents, so the nightmare coming back to her had nothing to do with that pain. “Are you jealous of him? Is that why you’ve taken to haunting me?”
Her first love didn’t answer, but if he had, she’d be worried about herself.
Today she needed to begin her investigation with the presentation she planned to make to Tasgall’s senior men, and the last thing she needed to do was show up for that with swollen eyes and a red nose from crying over her dead lover. Walking over to the wash stand, she splashed her face and dried it off before she used the comb Inga had given her for her hair, which she rolled into the twist she wore for work and secured with her hair picks.
Downstairs she found everyone in the kitchens bustling as they prepared the food for the morning meal, but no one yet in the great hall. As maids came in to take down the trestle tables and benches she went to help them, earning some approving smiles but also a few glares.
“’Tisnae work for the likes of you, outsider,” one of the older girls muttered as she brushed past her.
Elspeth suddenly appeared with a bucket of wood, which she thumped down on the floor.
“Did Chatelaine put you in charge of the rest of us, Una?” As some of the younger girls snickered she walked up to the larger maid, so close she made her step back. “You came here an outsider yourself, too, a century after me. Or did you forget?”
“Look at her then,” Una said, gesturing at Ava. “She dresses like a man. She acts like she cannae wipe her own arse. Indeed, she does naught but hang on the laird. Why help us as if she’s just as lowly?”
That made Ava laugh out loud.
“Laws, if only you knew where I came from, girl.” She walked over to join Elspeth. “I don’t know much about fancy ladies, but I’ve always worked for my living back in my time, since I was old enough to get a permit.” She leaned forward and looked into the glowering maid’s eyes. “I’m also quite capable of wiping my own butt, thank you kindly.”
Una’s angry expression grew uncertain. “’Tis only how you seem, Agent. You’re forever bathing and grooming, and you never curtsey.”
Now she understood how strange she must seem to these women. “Well, now. In my time we like to stay clean, and we surely don’t bow to anyone. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just my way. I’m sure other ladies that have come through are more like me.”
Una sighed. “Aye, so ’tis. Our chatelaine’s the same, and so is that pompous fair wench who came last.”
“Anyone else object to this woman offering her aid?” Elspeth looked around, but no one said a word. “Good. Get back to work, the lot of you. Ava, would you help me with stocking the wood piles this morn?”
Accompanying the maid on her many trips to the woodpile and carrying in the heavy buckets of splits kept Ava occupied until the first of the clansmen began to enter the great hall. Although reliving Chris’s funeral had her still a little nauseated, the sight of Tasgall coming in with Darro and the other chieftains reassured her, although she wasn’t sure why.
I’ll tell you why, Legs, her first love whispered inside her head. You had that dream because you’re prepared to leave the past behind, but you’re also still fighting it. He’s why you’re ready. He’s the one you’ve been waiting to find. So let me go, babe. It’s time.
Maybe, Ava thought, it was.
P olly wandered through the gardens looking for her boss and all the other plant-yankers, but for some reason they’d disappeared. Even Fat Boy Rob had gone and ghosted her. She checked in all of the sheds, which stood empty, but when she reached the granary she found she couldn’t open the door. From the white sticky mess stuck in the top and side gaps it looked as if someone had glued it shut.
“What in tarnation is going on?” She walked around to where she could look inside one of the windows, and found it covered on the inside with more of the white stuff. Putting her eye up to a small hole in the white, she peered inside.
Giant fat green worms crawled over big bundles of the white gunk, as they went in and out of a hole in the floor. From one of the bundles a limp brown hand stuck out, revealing what was inside.
Polly reeled back from the window, and then bent down to look under the granary. In that space the worms crawled down and disappeared into large holes in the dirt lined with more of the white stuff. One stopped and turned to look at her, at which point she ran into the stronghold and slammed the door shut.
“Nasty son of a whore.” Of course the worms had to be Ian’s doing, disgusting as he was, he probably turned into one of those when he wasn’t pretending to be human.
Polly wished she hadn’t let him mess with her yesterday, because now seeing all those bundled-up dead people was making her hot. Then she saw Una slipping into one of the storage rooms with a scullery boy, and snickered as she went after them.
Inside the larder she found the maid and the scullery already screwing, and leaned back against the door as she watched them for a minute. When Una noticed her she shrieked and pushed the kid off her as she scrambled to her feet.
“Gee, I wonder what Farlan will say when I tell him I caught you two in here,” Polly said, grinning broadly. “He’ll probably give you both a month of punishment work. Do you like scrubbing out the toilets? Or wait, there’s something worse, isn’t there? Cleaning out all the chimneys, right. We do that next month, and everyone hates that.” She studied their woebegone faces. “I forgot, you’re both matched up to other people, aren’t you?”
“’Tis nearly time to change our spouses,” the scullery lad protested.
She snickered. “Right, you got stuck with that old lady Gedda from the laundry last year, didn’t you? So you’d have first pick this year. I bet you can’t wait to be done with her wrinkled old snatch. But if I remember right, she’s pretty jealous, isn’t she?”
“Gedda shall understand,” Una insisted. “’Twas only a fancy.”
“Will that big woodsman you’re screwing do the same when he hears you’re putting out for a kid like him?” she asked, jerking her thumb at the scullery.
The scullery began to bluster about how he wasn’t afraid of any woodsman, but Una came over and took hold of her hands. “Please, Mistress, we meant no harm. We’ll never stray from our partners again, I vow.”
“You’re a lousy liar, honey.” She thought of how Ian had shoved her down and molested her, and reached into the girl’s skirt, giving her crotch a painful squeeze. “You’ll do exactly what I say from now on, especially when I’m in charge. Both of you.”
The idiots exchanged a look before they slowly nodded.
“I need to make sure you’re loyal to me.” She marched Una over and shoved her over a large wooden salt box, and then pulled up her skirts to reveal her sex. “Come here, little boy. Time to be a real man. You do to her what I tell you to.”
What followed was so much fun to watch Polly almost came herself. Once the kid had finished she grabbed Una’s hair and jerked her head up so she could look in her eyes, which were glutted with tears and humiliation.
“Good girl. Remember, no matter who takes over this place, I own both of you from here on out.” She kissed her cheek before sauntering out of the larder.
From there she walked toward the great hall, trying to decide how she should run to the laird and tell him about the enormous gross things she’d seen. She could mention seeing her ex, although she would pretend she didn’t know who he was. Maybe she could help Tasgall capture Ian the next time he came in to look for his stupid treasure. All it would take was a clever story, and she had a million of those. The laird would get the truth out of him, and then he’d be grateful to her for exposing that sneaky rotten jerk. She could tell him how to kill Ian, too, and then there would be no one and nothing to spoil things for her.
Tasgall will finally see how important I can be to him, Polly thought, delighted.
She kept imagining how it would be as she walked from there to the great hall. Just as she was about to step inside she saw a tall, dark-haired woman standing beside the laird and talking to the other men gathering at the laird’s table.
You’d be FBI Agent Travars, the snoopy bitch hunting me.
She wasn’t pretty at all, Polly thought as she stared at the other woman. Ava looked too tall and skinny, like a boy who still jerked off instead of doing girls, and she dressed like a frumpy old woman. She had her ugly black hair gathered back in a clip with strands popping out, as if she’d been too busy to get it right, and not a speck of lipstick or makeup on her pale face. She didn’t even have a decent rack.
“Why worry about that loser?” Polly muttered under her breath as she went into the kitchen to grab some food. When Doon scowled at her she batted her eyelashes at the crabby old woman and said, “We’re so busy today, ma’am, I hardly have time for breakfast. I’ll just eat this while I’m working.”
The cook sniffed and went back to work without replying.
After grabbing some oatcakes and a hunk of cheese, Polly went back out into the gardens, but kept away from the infested granary. Instead, she slipped into Old Eachann’s potting shed, and plopped down on a stool by the window to keep watch for the worms.
They might try to cocoon me, too.
Soon someone would notice that no one was working in the gardens but her, so it might be better if she disappeared for a while, too. After eating her food she went into one of the back halls of the castle, where she knew Ben Miller stored some of the things he made in rooms too small to serve as living quarters. No one would look for her in there, and she could sneak out at night to get whatever she needed when they changed the castle guards on duty. For a moment she considered trying to seduce the doctor into hiding and protecting her, but he was such a goody-goody he’d probably just hand her over to that asshole war master, or even Ava Travars. No, she needed someone who was as gullible and dumb as those two kids, someone who really needed to get laid.
The distant sound of a hammer striking metal made Polly grin.