Free The Price of Desire by Leda Swann

wanted her.

    It was her shame that he had succeeded, her shame that she had allowed him to take her virginity with so little ceremony. She had not even tried to resist him, or put up a fight. On the contrary, she had welcomed his attentions, and allowed him to do shocking things to her body. Even worse, she had practiced similarly on his body, exploring it and touching it and tasting it without a thought for all the precepts she had been brought up with.
     
    Resolutely she turned her back on her shame, forcing it to the dark recesses of her mind. Her virginity, or her lack of it, ought to be her last worry right now. She had more practical concerns to worry about, such as how she was to keep them all strong enough to make it to the workhouse before another night fell. Though they were trying manfully to hide it, all her sisters looked as exhausted and as dispirited as she felt. All of them, that is, except for Dorothea, whose natural good spirits shone through even in such moments as these.

    Oblivious to the discomfort, Teddy was the last to wake. Eventually he, too, rolled over and opened his eyes to the new day. “What’s for breakfast?” he demanded before he had even gotten to his feet.

    “Blackberries. And the sooner you get up and going, the sooner you’ll have them in your belly.”

    That had him on his feet right away. “Blackberries. Goody, goody. Where are they?”

    “Growing on the bushes. You’ll have to find them before you can eat them.”

    “I bet I find the most,” he said as he ran on ahead of the group, with Dorothea hard on his heels. “I’m the best blackberry finder of all of us.”

    “No you’re not. I am,” Dorothea chanted back at him.

    “Don’t count on it,” Caroline taunted them, skipping after them with a smile on her face. “I’m the biggest and the oldest, so I shall find the biggest and the best blackberries.”

    “I’m the smartest, so I will find the most,” Emily proclaimed, joining in the game.

    “No you won’t,” Beatrice said with a scowl, rushing after them with her skirts in one fist and pulling Louisa along behind her. “I’m the fiercest and Louisa is the sweetest and nicest, so we will find the most. Won’t we, Louisa?”

    They were so busy arguing with each other and searching out the biggest and tastiest blackberries along the hedgerows they forgot about the rain and the cold and the hunger in their bellies. Mid-morning had come and gone before they wearied of the game.

    Teddy, his hands and mouth dyed purple with blackberry juice, was the first to stop. “I’ve eaten so many blackberries I’ve got a stomachache,” he announced proudly. “That means I won.”

    Not wanting to be outdone, Dorothea clutched at her own stomach. “I’ve got a stomachache, too.”

    Now that Caroline thought about it, her stomach wasn’t feeling any too healthy, either. “We all won,” she announced, “but Teddy and Dorothea won more than the rest of us,” she added hurriedly at the look of belligerence she saw forming on two small faces.
     
    They had, indeed, all won, as they were a good mile or two closer to the workhouse without even noticing the walk. Another couple of hours and they would be there.

    It was closer even than she had thought. A half hour or so trudging along the lanes brought them to a small village. In the distance they could see the forbidding brick face of the workhouse, set apart from the respectable parts of town, looming above the humble cottages like a vast prison.
     
    Now they were so close she could not bear to hurry there. Once the workhouse gates closed behind them, there would be no escape. “I need a rest,” she pronounced, making her way over to the village green and plonking herself down on the grass.

    The others followed her, subdued now that the end of their long walk was finally in sight.
     
    The village bakery lay across the green, wafting the smell of fresh bread across the grass. Caroline’s stomach