The Sevenfold Spell Read Online Free

endured ten more slaps before I got angry enough to slap her back. She burst into tears. We didn’t speak for the rest of the day.
    That evening, I left, walked to Willard’s farm and waited around until he used the outhouse one final time that night. As he went back toward the house, I stepped out in front of him. He stopped.
    “You were right,” he said. “What you did the other day…word has gotten around.”
    “I’m glad of it.” I stepped up to him, wrapped my arms around his neck and gave him a lingering kiss. He soon pulled away.
    “How can you be glad of it? They say such terrible things about you.”
    “I’m glad because you care.”
    I kissed him again. He went into the house and, at length, sneaked back out. We spent the night in the hayloft. I didn’t feign pleasure as I had for the benefit of his brothers, but true gratification still eluded me. Toward dawn, while I was dressing, he spoke again.
    “I know you never feel any pleasure, no matter how much you act like it for my brothers. Why do you keep doing this?”
    I decided not to tell him of my wish for his child. “It wasn’t all acting. Before your brothers giggled…that was real.” I shrugged. “We just need practice.”
    “What we need is a more comfortable place,” he said.
    “That would probably help.”
    I really didn’t expect it to lead anywhere. We continued to meet nightly. My mother would no longer have him in the house, so we usually stayed in the barn, where the cows were by now used to our noises. His father started making him sleep with his brothers, so he met me later and later every night.
    ***
    On our two-week anniversary, he was pulling out of the farm in his wagon as I arrived. I looked up at him as he drew the mule to a stop beside me.
    “How on earth did you sneak the wagon out?” I asked him.
    “I didn’t,” he replied. He reached his hand for mine. After he helped me in, he tsked the mule into motion again, headed toward town. I sat beside him on the driver’s bench.
    “So your father knows you’re out?”
    “Yes.”
    “How did you get him to agree to let you go?”
    “He didn’t.”
    “I thought he was dead set against us getting together.”
    He spat something. “He is.”
    Eventually, I pried the story out of him. His father had been making him sleep with his brothers, but tonight, Willard had refused. Instead, he went to hitch up the mule while his father started waling on him.
    Or, his father had tried.
    “I learned something tonight, Talia. I’m stronger than my pa.”
    I just looked over at him.
    “I just kept on hitching the mule to the wagon and pushing him out of the way. Eventually, he realized he couldn’t stop me.”
    “You fought your father for me?”
    “I never struck a blow,” he said.
    “But your father struck you.”
    “I guess.”
    I felt a rush of gratitude. This was the bravest thing he had ever done for me. I kissed him. “Thank you,” I said.
    “His old-man punches don’t hurt, anyway.”
    I kissed him again. “Then why do I taste blood?”
    “Maybe he got a lucky hit in.”
    I sat on his lap and kissed him some more. He dropped the reins and let the mule find its own way as he reached up my skirt. I never wore any of my usual underclothes when going to meet him, and his fingers were no longer as clumsy as they once were. Soon, he had me gasping and writhing. After a few moments, I hitched up my skirts and straddled him, and I rode him all the way to town. The mule plodded on, unconcerned. The wagon bounced and shuddered so much that I hardly dared move, and I have never enjoyed a bumpy wagon ride so much in my life.
    “Where are we going?” I breathed against his lips.
    “It’s a surprise,” he whispered back.
    By the time we arrived in town, I was sitting demurely beside him, wondering what he had planned. He took me to an inn.
    It was well out of Tallow’s End, in a part of town where travelers stayed. He left the mule and wagon with a stable boy, and