The Sevenfold Spell Read Online Free Page A

we entered the inn and went up a flight of stairs. He opened a door with a key.
    “It’s ours for the week,” he said. “The innkeeper thinks we are newly wed.”
    That night, for the first time, we had time, comfort and privacy. He undressed me and lowered me to the bed. I opened my legs, but he didn’t thrust into me straightaway. Instead, he kissed me and traced his fingers down my breasts, and back again, down my stomach, and back again, dipping lower and making me gasp each time.
    “You’ve learned something,” I breathed against his lips.
    “I’ve been getting lots of advice,” he said.
    I remembered his crude explorations our first night together, and hardly thought this the same person. His advice had been very good indeed.
    Of all our time together, that was the sweetest night. He treated me like a bride. For the first time, I wondered if he loved me, after all.
    And that night, I finally knew pleasure as a woman.
    I only had six more nights and was determined to make the best of them. I came home later and later every morning.
    “You stupid girl,” my mother said, when I returned one morning. “You’ll end up pregnant.”
    “I hope I do,” I said.
    She gaped at me. “Have you lost all reason?” she asked. “Do you want to bring up a fatherless child? You, of all people, should know what that is like.”
    Her words cut me, for I had never considered the consequences my child would face for my actions. My father had sailed away when I was young and never returned, leaving me alone with an embittered mother. My child would face an added burden—she would be ostracized as a bastard. However, I was too selfish to heed my mother, and surely I was already pregnant, anyway.
    It grieves me now that I was so cruel.
    During the last three days, we never left the inn at all. We stayed in each other’s arms as much as possible and even spent some time talking.
    “Why did you want to marry me, Willard?” I asked. “I have warts, and I once heard Widow Harla say that I have a face as long as a horse.”
    “Widow Harla is the one with the horse face.”
    “But why?” I asked. “As a son of a farmer—even a younger son—you were respectable enough to go after any girl.”
    He was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Because you listened, I suppose.”
    “I listened?”
    “Aye. I’d go on and on, talking about cows and pigs and the produce yield, and you listened.”
    I thought on it for a moment. “But I was interested. That sort of farm life—I know little of it in the city.”
    “Believe me, most girls find it boring.”
    I swallowed past a lump in my throat. I’d never felt so valued before.
    ***
    When he left I wept, surprised by the intensity of my grief. I comforted myself by counting down the few days left until my menses was due. After all, the timing had been perfect—we had started our affair just after my last menses, and we had certainly hit my peak fertile period many times over those weeks. The child would be a girl, and I decided to name her Aurora, after the princess.
    When I saw the blood, I mourned as if I had lost a child. I had been so sure, so certain, he had planted his seed. Now, my chance was gone. My mother took great satisfaction with the arrival of my menses, and she had no pity on my tears. Life went back to its dreary normalcy.
    With one exception. I was now a pariah.

Chapter Four
Lean Times
    Widow Harla decided to take up brewing. We continued to teach ourselves weaving, but it seemed like every other spinster in the city had the same idea. And the cost of thread had soared once it had to be imported. Once we ran through our thread stockpile, we barely managed to keep ourselves fed. After a year or so, we sold the loom at a loss.
    Since thread was now so expensive, my mother tried to make a profit in the importing business. Unfortunately, neither one of us had any business savvy for working with foreign merchants. They cheated us, and our money from the sale