Free The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) by Rebecca Lochlann Page A

slumped to her knees. “I’ll never get away.” She struck her fists against the floor. “This is my madhouse.”

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    WHEN MORRIGAN ROSE in the morning, all the previous night’s seductive warmth had vanished, replaced by fine grey mist alternating with drumming rain and growling thunder.
    “Mama,” she said, low. “I’ve ruined everything.”
    Her reflection in the window, wavery and indistinct as it was, revealed the darkening bruise Kit had made on her neck. She rubbed it, flinching at the sting, thankful she had plenty of collars high enough to cover the evidence of her wrongdoing.
    Her cheeks were reddened from his unshaven face, but she didn’t think anyone would notice that. Who would suspect her of meeting a man in the barn and nearly coupling with him like a witless animal? No one, not even Douglas, surely, though he was always eager to think the worst.
    Morrigan didn’t need Hannah’s ghost to warn her about the risk she’d taken, the consequences she’d barely escaped. The ugly word “whore” said it all.
    Stranraer could claim one whore of its own. Though the woman was despised and shunned, abused by gangs of unruly boys, forced to live in an awful shack on the outskirts of town, she stubbornly remained. Originally from somewhere in the Highlands, Diorbhail Sinclair wore clothes that were hardly more than rags, as did her fragile, bony daughter, but every time Morrigan had seen them, the wean’s face was clean and her hair combed.
    When Diorbhail first came to Stranraer, she’d passed herself off as a widow, but someone discovered she’d never been married, and that was the end of that. Her child had no father.
    Morrigan felt a certain wary kinship with Diorbhail’s bastard.
    Beatrice had instructed Morrigan to look the other direction if she happened upon Diorbhail, to cross the road so they wouldn’t come within speaking distance.
    Succumbing to an odd fascination, Morrigan often peeked anyway. Where is your man? she longed to ask. He should be here to protect the mother of his child from torment.
    Douglas had spit on the ground when Diorbhail passed by. Morrigan knew mere spitting wouldn’t satisfy him if he found out about Kit and his daughter in the barn.
    She hid her face among the dresses in her wardrobe, breathing the comforting scent of cloves and wool. “I know you’re gone, and maybe you never cared about me anyway, Hannah Lawton. But there’s no one else I can talk to. None who could understand.”
    With a last wishful glance at her bed, she smoothed her skirts and trudged down the stairs, following the scent of new-baked scones. Once when she was little, she’d pilfered four wedges, covering each with so much of Beatrice’s heather honey she’d made herself sick. She couldn’t smell them baking without thinking of that day and suffering a twinge of queasiness. But she still loved honey.
    “Morning, Auntie,” she said as she entered the kitchen. She slipped on the jacket hanging by the close door, and stepped outside.
    Sharp air stung her cheeks and clouded her breath. The rain slackened into drizzle, and she paused to scrutinize the muddy road. Mist prevented her from seeing much beyond the carriage house, but she mentally followed that road as it wound away to the east and the veterinary’s door.
    Before she’d regained her sense of decency, there had been an instant where Kit’s touch felt better than anything she’d ever known… better than the taste of honey, or the softness of summer rain, or the brush of wind on the moor. That part shamed her the most. For several moments, she’d lost all notion of right and wrong.
    Yesterday she’d imagined herself Curran Ramsay’s wife. Fourteen hours later, she’d lured Kit into kissing her, and more.
    What about the long-held, impassioned dream of the warrior she’d fondly dubbed “Theseus”? She shook her head and faced the truth. The pleasure she’d felt with Kit had really been for that