Harlot (Bartered Hearts 2)

Frowning, he stood, hands raised as if to calm her. “You know it’s different for men,” he tried, but she pushed her finger into his naked chest.

“Yes, it’s different. I did it in order to live. You should be ashamed. How dare you look do

wn on me? How dare you?”

He grabbed her wrist, but she jerked it back. “You’ll fuck a whore and then you just fasten your trousers and walk away, back to your life with no consequences, and we are marked forever! Marked by your stupid cocks. Marked by your precious need. You’re a monster. As bad as all the rest. Get out.”

“Jess—”

“Get out! You’ve had me every way. You put your prick in every hole. Got your money’s worth from my cunt. It’s over. Get out of this house and never come back.”

He shook his head, and she wanted to slap him.

“I hate you,” she growled. “I hate you and I can’t forgive you, do you hear me? I will never, ever forgive you.”

He simply stood there, staring at her, his beautiful body uncovered, his face tight with disbelief. She wanted to hit him, hurt him, and she wanted to weep for the loss of him.

If he didn’t leave, she was going to cry, so Jessica scooped up his trousers and shirt and threw them at his face before she turned to escape. She ran to the back bedroom and slammed the door hard, terrified he’d come after her. She didn’t think he would hurt her. She couldn’t imagine that. But he might see her. He might touch her. He might talk her into loving him again, and she could never do that.

Shaking, she pressed her back to the door and prayed he would leave. Every creak of the house made her jerk in fear, her fury and hurt pressing too tightly under her skin. She was panicked that he might come for her but she couldn’t think why. All she could think was leave. Leave, Caleb, please just leave.

It felt like hours, but it couldn’t have been a whole minute before his steps approached. Tears streaming down her face, Jessica breathed quietly, shallowly, as if she were hidden prey.

In the end, his steps paused for a horrifyingly long time, but then they struck one stair and the next and he was downstairs and through the hall and out of her house.

Jessica slid down to the floor and let her grief flow out on a long, low cry. Melisande had been wrong. Jessica hadn’t gotten away from what she’d done and she never would.

Chapter 11

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They’d only been eating string beans for three days, but God, Jessica was sick of them already. Still, she kept picking them. She set her thumbnail to each stem, popped off the pod, and dropped it in her basket. Melisande was teaching her how to preserve them today, and Jessica would do her best not to make a face at the idea of months and months of string beans. It was food, and it would sustain them, and that was what mattered.

Two weeks before, she couldn’t have imagined caring about such a thing. The night Caleb had left, she hadn’t even bothered locking the door behind him. If someone had wanted to come and hurt her, she would have let him. Or maybe she’d hoped Caleb would come back and beg her for…something. Forgiveness. Absolution. Love.

But she’d opened her eyes the next morning to find that she was still alone and still safe, and while cleaning and dressing, she’d realized her limbs felt lighter. Melisande had already put the biscuits in the oven and had been waiting in the garden. She’d glanced at Jessica’s swollen eyes but said nothing, and they’d worked in peace the whole morning. When the sun had finally snuck past the barn and caught them, Jess had felt it in a way she never had before. The hot, pure light on her skin, heating up something cold and dark inside her. She’d stood straight and closed her eyes, and the sun had burned her clean.

Melisande’s words had burned through her too. You’re still alive.

Two weeks gone, and she was still alive. And if she had to eat string beans for months and dine on nothing else but eggs from her chickens and milk from her cow, she would. She was alive and this place was hers and she would make it work because she had to.

She’d paid the taxes immediately, afraid someone would steal the gold from her cellar or that Caleb would return and demand it back. But he hadn’t returned, and that was fine too, even if her heart broke with it.

It was over.

Her only regret was that she’d told him she hated him. She didn’t. She’d hurt him badly, and he’d hurt her back, and he was still a good man. And if he was a good man, then maybe she was a good woman too. Maybe.

As the heat began to take hold of the morning, Jessica snapped a bean in half and popped it into her mouth just for the moisture.

The garden was small and the cornfield only a little bigger. They wouldn’t grow enough to sell and no one around here would buy from them anyway, but Jessica had been puzzling out a plan.

She had chickens and a milk cow. She couldn’t do business close enough to home to sell eggs, but she could raise chicks and take them to market a couple of towns away where no one knew her. She could bring her cow along too and see it bred. By next year, she might have a calf to sell, along with more chickens and maybe pickled eggs too. Not a lot, but it would be something. Enough to pay the taxes and feed the three of them. Enough to get a real start.

The thought warmed her even more than the sun. Her cheeks flushed with strange embarrassment. A start meant she wasn’t giving up. It meant she would go on. After all, plenty of women went through worse than she had and never got a farm out of the deal. Countless women never even got to say it had been a choice. Jessica was done feeling sorry for herself.

She stretched out her back as she finished with the last beanstalk. They’d be standing over a hot stove all day, but she was looking forward to learning something new and useful. There would be pickles to make soon, and tomatoes to stew and corn to preserve, things that would see them through the year.

Melisande must have heard the sound first, because her head jerked up just before Jessica heard it too. A rider.