AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Curse my infernally bad handwriting! My father had always nagged at me to improve my writing. To make it as carefully scripted and as flawless as his. He’d always told me that untidy words upon a page came from an untidy mind.
I’d never believed him until now. But my mind certainly felt far from tidy at the moment.
It felt like I was close to losing it entirely.
She thought she was coming here to be my bride.
I ignored the hot pulse of a thrill at that thought. The thought that, had I made an advance towards her, she wouldn’t have rejected me.
But I buried that throb. Buried it deep beneath good sense and sympathy. It was only then that I noticed the rather rough cut of Wynthea’s hair, chopped just above her shoulders. Women from the capital and the surrounding areas tended to wear their hair long…
Unless they were impoverished enough to sell it to the Dreamspinners Guild.
The old fraying clothing and her oddly anxious reactions towards me suddenly made sense.
She didn’t come here for a job. She came here as a mail-order bride because she had no other choice.
Wynthea stepped away from me, creating some distance before turning and facing me once more. She stared at me, watching as all the pieces finally fit together inside my head.
“Well, obviously, there has been some sort of mistake. A mistake, it appears, I have caused.” I sighed angrily, re-folding the contract and putting it back in my pocket. I wasn’t angry with her, of course. But with myself. I’d wasted both her time and my own. “I am terribly sorry for the confusion and the inconvenience,” I continued. “Of course, you are still welcome to stay the night here. And I will compensate you for the journey back to the capital.”
The blush that had stained her cheeks faded with frightening quickness. Her eyes looked even bigger now, huge in a ghostly-white face.
“Back?” she croaked. “You’re sending me back?”
Her fingers dug cruelly into the brown fabric of the cloak she held. She grew so tense that her shoulders began to inch upwards until they were nearly around her ears. Her next words were so tightly hissed that I barely made them out.
“I can’t go back.”
“Surely, the Matchers can set you up with another… Arrangement.” I offered weakly. That last word came out stiff and choked. Because I knew just what it meant.
If I sent her back, I’d be sending her to marry someone else. Perhaps someone she did not want.
Not that it appears she came here wanting me, either.
“Can the Matchers not find other employment for you?” I asked suddenly. Why had I not thought of that before? She didn’t have to enter into another marriage match! They could find something else for her to do. Matchers created matches of all sorts, not just marriage matches.
“I already tried that,” Wynthea whispered. “The Matchers said there’s nothing else for me.”
I groaned. “Of course, you did.”
She wouldn’t have gone straight for the marriage option if she had other possibilities available to her. At least, that was assuming she didn’t want to enter into the marriage option. Some human women did want that. Some wanted a husband and home to take care of, and to have children, and they didn’t care whether it was a human or a monster who provided that. But it was evident beyond refute that was not Wynthea’s situation. She had not come here hopeful and excited to build a new life with a much-desired husband.
She’d come here out of desperation.
“Please,” she said tremulously. The firelight at the end of the hall somehow grew brighter in her eyes. They turned glossy.
Tears.
I watched one tear roll down her pale cheek with unhappy fascination. I’d never seen a human cry before, but I knew it was something they did during times of great sorrow or stress.
“Please,” she said again. “I’m begging you. I can’t go back. There is nothing for me. It already took every bit of courage and will I had to come here and I can’t… I can’t do it again.”
Her breath shuddered, and she dragged her cloak across her face, drying the tears.
The expression that met me when the cloak fell away was not one of sadness. It was one of ruthless determination. It was strange to see a face that soft and small turn so hard.
“You reached out to the Matchers because you needed someone. I can be that someone. I’ll be your assistant! I’ll work night and day for you. I’ll do anything it takes to stay here!”
