Free Riverrun by Felicia Andrews Page A

opened, yet she was able to keep herself from screaming until a practiced series of deep, shuddering breaths eased the tension in her muscles and calmed her enough to think clearly.
    If the limb was not broken, and she now suspected it was not, then it had received a banging that had surely done damage to bone and muscle.
    When she had wiped the tears from the unexpected pain from her eyes, she studied the room. It was large, fully as large as the entire first floor of her father’s house. Evidently it had once been a well-appointed boudoir for an aristocratic lady. The walls were painted a soft, soothing cream, and there were hints of gold in the intricate swirls that marked the junctures and corners of the walls, ceiling, and flooring. A half-dozen rectangular faded patches indicated the places where portraits or mirrors had once hung, and the panels in the door on her right were dark and in sore need of polishing. Indeed, she noted as she looked around her, nothing in the room seemed to be quite completely clean. The walls and doors, the dark drapes of the windows on the left, all were covered with a film of gray dust; even the laced canopy of her bed had faded from a cool, pale green to some indeterminate color. Was she in a deserted mansion, then? Was she alone? She reached down and touched her leg thoughtfully. She knew she was strong, stronger by far than the average young girl who stayed cooped up in a city, or even a small town, but could she have crawled from the riverbank to find this place, her mind saving her sanity by blanking out all sensation until she was safe? She shook her head at the foolish notion. That was impossible. Even had she been able to endure the agony of her injured leg as she moved through the woods to the house, up the stairs and into this bed—granting all that, through some major miracle—she could not have managed to wrap her own leg, not in the way that it had been done. Nor, she thought as she looked down at herself, could she have gotten into this beautiful nightdress, flimsy, warm, clinging to her skin like doubly thick velvet.
    Then … who had brought her here?
    A twinge of fear brought her hand to her chest. Josh? Cal? Had one of them escaped the ambush of … how many days ago? Had one of them backtracked and discovered her, helpless by the river? She looked wildly about the room, searching for some sort of weapon, when suddenly she laughed and brought herself calm. That, at least, was out of the question. Certainly, after what she had done, they would not be so gentle as to bathe her and dress her; she seriously doubted that, since they were probably on home ground, they would even have bothered with her once they’d discovered she was gone. Revenge was not out of the question, but this room and this nightdress could hardly constitute revenge.
    The same question again, then: who?
    She knotted the light blanket that covered her legs in her hands, struggling for some answers, making her head spin with dozens of dreamlike possibilities. Then she froze as she heard a light thump against the door. Quickly, she pulled the coverlet to her chest, staring at the latch as it turned in jerks and the door finally swung slowly inward. She closed her eyes, then opened them carefully, knowing there was nothing she could do but watch and wait.
    An old, bone-thin black woman edged into the room bearing a heavy porcelain tray in her calloused, gnarled hands. The laughter that bubbled in Cass’s throat nearly caused her to gag. The woman wore a sparkling white apron over a calico dress, and a cheerful red bandanna was wound tightly around her head. In her left ear she wore a thick gold band, and on her gleaming brown face a broad and welcome smile.
    “Well, child,” she said, bustling over to the bed and resting the tray on the mattress next to Cass’s leg. “Well! I thought I heard them bedsprings workin’.
    “‘Bout time you done woke up, y’know. I was beginnin’ to think mebbe you