Free Discovering Daisy by Lacey Thorn Page B

numb to care. She’d taken a life, had his blood staining her hands. And she felt nothing. She should feel something.
    The pounding of footsteps broke her from her reverie and she realised someone was running from the house. She slowly left the bedroom and walked back into the other room to find her sister. She vaguely took note of the bodies of the other men around her. The two who had been attacking her sister were dead, and she knew without looking that Saviour had indeed come to try and save them. The other two men were gone and she didn’t care if it was of their own free will or not.
    Her gaze locked on the still form of her sister. Too still. Her dress was shredded and Daisy could already see the bruises forming on her sister’s breasts, belly and thighs. And around her neck. Amelia’s eyes were open, but sightless. And with a wailing cry Daisy embraced the still warm body of her dead sister. She felt Saviour behind her, trying to pull her away but she couldn’t move and the old man seemed to understand.
    She was still there when the sheriff came, still cradling her sister’s body. Saviour must have left at some point and she was glad that he wasn’t here to be blamed, glad that her friend would not suffer for trying to protect her.
    Sheriff Duckett walked through the door with one of the boys from the ranch down the road behind him, the boy’s eyes wide at the carnage that lay in the house.
    “What in God’s name happened here?” the sheriff demanded.
    And with a deep breath Daisy answered. “I killed them. I killed them all.”

    And now here she sat on a cot in the local jail waiting to be given to the man whose name was pulled for her in the bride lottery. The sheriff hadn’t believed her capable of killing but when she refused to say differently he’d had no choice but to bring her in. He’d talked to her about the wife lottery, explained it to her. Women were few and far between in the west and so many small towns had begun what was known as the bride lotteries.
    Women who were accused of a crime where basically given to a man in marriage instead of prosecuted and sent to jail or hung. Honestly she didn’t care, was still too numb to care. So she sat and she waited. She stood when the sheriff came for her, let him guide her to stand before the minister. She heard the mutterings of “half-breed” but paid little attention. When she was nudged she said the right words. Then she was led to a chair to sit while her new husband spoke quietly with the sheriff. She had no idea how much time passed before her husband came for her, led her out into the fresh air and over to two horses that were saddled and waiting.
    “Do you ride?” her husband asked her and she finally looked up at him. He was a big man, towering over her. His skin was a dark tan, his hair a long glossy black that hung over his shoulders. But his eyes were a brilliant blue. Except for the eyes, he looked a lot like Saviour and she seemed to relax and breathe for the first time since that night.
    “Yes,” she breathed. “I can ride.” And she softly smiled at him.
    He seemed startled by her smile, almost alarmed by it. But whatever he was thinking he kept it to himself and lifted her easily into the saddle of one of the horses before mounting the other.
      “Let’s hope you can keep up,” was all he said before leading her out of town.
    And Daisy wondered if she would ever get the chance to see Saviour again and tell him thank you. Somehow she figured he would know even if she never saw him again.
    It was a long ride and though she had become accustomed to the saddle, she hadn’t slept well while in jail and was having trouble staying awake while they rode. Luckily she caught herself every time she went to fall off the horse. Had she known her new husband better, or, well, at all, she would have told him how tired she was. But though she had felt comfortable around him immediately, she’d learned through watching her sister