Taken by the Irish Mobster (Claddagh Clans: O’Rourkes #3)

1. Prudence

Prudence

My knees ache from the hard-packed dirt of the Reflection Room. I drag in air that tastes of mildew and rotted wood, a smell that has soaked into the boards of this enclosure for longer than I have been alive.

I try to shift my weight, but my thighs scream. The room is three feet tall at its peak, narrow as an outhouse, and I have been locked inside since Housemother Ruth shut the door on me hours ago, or maybe days—I cannot tell without the sun.

There are no windows in here. Only a slot in the door for Father to pass judgment through when he is ready.

I clasp my hands and press my forehead to my knuckles. A psalm rises in my throat, the way it always does when fear takes hold.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

I have recited the lines over a hundred times since Housemother Ruth locked the door.

I shall not want.

But I do want—or, rather, I don’t want. That is the whole of my sin, laid bare.

I don’t want to marry Father.

Blessed is the daughter who bends.

I bent when Elder Morrison put his palm flat on the back of my neck at harvest and left it there until the sweat of his palm soaked into my collar.

I bent when my only friend, Sister Mercy, walked down the aisle to marry a man with liver spots on his hands, and she did not look at me once.

I cried, and I was made to confess my sinfulness in front of the whole Flock while they prayed loudly for my wretched spirit.

But when Father, in his study, his pale watery eyes on my mouth, told me I had been chosen—a blessing, he called it—I did not bend. Not fast enough.

“The Lord has placed a blessing upon you,” Father announced. “I have prayed on it, and the answer has come. You will take the vows. You will become my ninth bride. And in so doing, you will be lifted from your orphan’s portion and made whole in the household of the anointed.”

The floor tilted beneath me. I felt as though I was going to be sick.

My face moved before I could stop it. I do not know what expression crossed it—revulsion, maybe, or fear—but Father saw. Father sees everything.

“Girl. You harbor doubt.” Father’s voice was as soft as always, yet I could sense his displeasure.

Willful defiance. Ingratitude.

Infractions warranting correction. And all true.

I don’t want to marry him.

Here in the Reflection Room, where Sister Ruth put me to await my sentence from Father, the thought remains.

It’s like a worm burrowing under my ribs, and I know it is a sin, yet I cannot stop thinking it.

I have seen his other wives. Sister Grace, whose eye was swollen purple for a month last spring.

Sister Faith, who walks with a limp she did not have before her wedding night.

Sister Elspeth, who was once smiling and full of life but who now weeps at the dinner table and walks around quieter than the dead.

And there are the others. The sisters who stop appearing at meals. The ones who are spoken of for a week and then not at all. Where do they go? When I asked Housemother Ruth once, she went still and white, and she said, “Never ask that again, Prudence. Never.”

I have counted. Seven sisters gone in two years. Seven.

A bolt slides and a soft voice sounds through the narrow slot in the door. He has come to dictate my punishment.

“Sister Prudence.”

My spine locks. Father’s voice is soft, but it’s worse than shouting.

“Yes, Father.”

“You have grieved the Lord.”

“Yes, Father.”

“You have grieved me.”

I press my forehead harder against my knuckles. “Yes, Father. I am sorry, Father.”

A pause. I hear him breathing on the other side of the door, slowly and patiently.

“Sorrow is good,” he murmurs. “Sorrow is the beginning of cleansing. But sorrow alone does not purify the flesh, does it, Sister Prudence?”

“No, Father.”

“The flesh requires its own lesson. You understand this.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Fifteen lashes at the post.”

My stomach turns. I swallow it down. Fifteen. Sister Mary only received twelve when she defied Elder Wilson last spring, and she could not lift her arms for a week. Housemother had to feed her with a spoon. Fifteen is more than I have ever been given. Fifteen is the number for serious rebellion.

“Thank you, Father,” I whisper around the lump in my throat, because thanking him for my punishment is part of the liturgy. Gratitude for correction is the eighth virtue.

“What have you to say now regarding our upcoming union?”

This is a test. I know it is. What happens if I fail? I know I should be elated. It is a true honor to be united with our spiritual leader through whom the Lord Almighty speaks. Or, it should be an honor. Yet I feel only dread.

I lift my head.

“Father,” I whisper. My voice scrapes out. “I am unworthy.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “You are. But the Lord lifts up even the unworthy when it pleases Him.”

“I do not—” I stop myself before my sinful truth emerges and instead say, “I am grateful, Father.”

He is quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I wonder if he has left the door. Then, softer than before, he asks, “Are you?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Because I have been told you wept.”

Housemother Ruth. She told him.

“I was overcome, Father.”

“By joy?”

“By unworthiness, Father.” I’m lying. Lying is a sin, yet I cannot bear to tell him the truth.

A longer pause. I hear the rasp of his thumb along the doorframe. I picture him on the other side, head tilted, turning my answer over like a stone, deciding whether to accept it.

“Fifteen lashes,” he confirms at last. “Cleansed flesh for our holy union.”

His footsteps move away across the dirt.

I clasp my hands together. I hear a high, thin ringing in my ears.

I know I am sinful and defiant. Yet I cannot purge these doubts. And the questions—I have so many.

Why are only the women punished? If suffering brings a soul nearer to God, why do the elders never kneel on the dirt? Why do the brothers never bare their backs for the whipping post?

These are the questions that have put me in this box forty-seven times. Forty-seven, and this one makes forty-eight, and very soon I will be a wife, and after that, I do not know what will become of me.

Blessed is the daughter who bends.

A small sound escapes me. It is not a sob, exactly, but I press both hands over my mouth and shove it down.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. I shall not want. I shall not—

The door opens.

I flinch so hard I hit my skull on the low beam above me. A familiar skirt, long and dull, comes into view. Housemother Ruth.

I try to rise, but my legs have forgotten what they are for, and I stagger into the wall before I find them.

“Prudence.”

Housemother Ruth crouches. Her face is carved out of years of wind and hard work, and her mouth is a line I have never seen soften. But her eyes, when they land on mine now, are almost merciful.

“It’s time, child,” she says.

I try to speak. My tongue is a dry leaf. I swallow and try again. “Housemother—”

“Listen to me.” She reaches in and takes my wrist. Her grip is strong, but it is gentle, and both things hurt in different ways. “You listen to me now, and you listen closely.”

I nod.

“Do not struggle.” Her voice drops so low I have to lean toward it. “Do not flinch, and do not cry out. Count them if you must. Do not give Father a reason to add more. Do you understand me, Prudence?”

“Yes, Housemother.”

“Remain stoic.” Her thumb presses once against the bone of my wrist, hard enough to bruise, and for a moment I think she might say something more.

Instead, she pulls me out of the Reflection Room.

Outside, I stagger, blinking at a sky so bright it might as well be a blade.

Two shapes block the sun. Brother Caleb and Brother Josiah. Neither of them look at my face. Brother Caleb clasps one of my arms and Brother Josiah takes the other.

Beyond them, in the clearing by the chapel, I can see the whipping post where a few members of the Flock are already gathered.

Blessed is the daughter who bends.