A Midsummer's Sin by Natasha Blackthorne Page B

better nature and he’d tumbled her twice. Now he had sated himself on her, he would never look at her as anything except his discarded harlot.
    She pressed her hand to her throat, willing the choking sensation to ease.
     
    * * * *
     
    Rosalind closed the book and sighed deeply. After an hour spent reading aloud to Sally, she longed for a long cool drink of water.
    “How lovely your voice is. It has been a long time since anyone entertained me so. Goodman Marlowe reads the Bible on the Sabbath evenings but it’s not the same as poetry and stories.”
    Rosalind had wondered at Thomas possessing a book of plays. But then he’d taught literature and languages at Oxford. Perhaps he couldn’t bear to leave all trappings of the past behind.
    Sally frowned. “Couldn’t we have just one more story, love?”
    Recovering rapidly now, the housekeeper had become a gentle tyrant in the past couple of days. Still, there must be few joys in her usual life. Unable to find the meanness to deny her, Rosalind opened the book. “What shall it be, then?”
    “Oh, Romeo and Juliet , I think.” Sally’s words were almost a sigh.
    Rosalind reached the part where Romeo was imploring Juliet as she stood on her balcony when an acrid scent filled the air. She sniffed. Yes, definitely. The bread!
    She jolted out of the chair and went scurrying into the kitchen.
    Thomas stood staring down at the smouldering black loaf in the open, cast-iron Dutch oven.
    “Goody Wilson always sang your praises.” He raised his brows.
    In the past couple of days, with the urgency of caring for a seriously ill woman behind her, she’d been all jitters and nerves. She’d broken a pitcher, spent all day on laundry only to foul it in the mud and dropped a box of precious blackberry preserves meant for the Boston market.
    “I cannot wait for Sally to recover,” he said at length.
    What could she say?
    “Mistress Abramson, why don’t you start some flat cakes so we shall at least have something to eat this night.” His tone was cool, censuring.
    “You don’t understand…” She dropped her voice. “Sally is very demanding. It is difficult to naysay her.”
    “If she is well enough to be a nuisance then she is well enough to be about her work. Thank the Lord I can take you home tomorrow before you lay waste to my entire house.”
    “You speak as if I were doing things purposefully.”
    “It’s not out of the question, is it? You were not happy to have to come here.”
    “I go where I am needed, just as anyone else would.”
    He scowled. “I think you want to bedevil me.”
    “Why should I want to bedevil you?”
    “Because of what happened. I know women. You were willing. More than willing, but, now that some time has passed, you have convinced yourself that you were unfairly seduced by an evil, lecherous man.”
    Her mouth had dropped open during his incredible accusation. “You believe this?”
    “I am forced to believe it by your very truculent behaviour.”
    “And your Patience—was she truculent as a way to attempt to govern your behaviour?”
    “It is a feminine way, is it not?”
    “Well, it is not my way. If I should wish to bedevil you, I should come right out and say the truth—that you’ve behaved like a petulant child over the matter with your long, arch looks and rude silences.”
    His expression closed. “You’re just a borrowed boundgirl. I think you should cease giving your opinions now.”
    He removed the charred bread from the oven and took it with him as he left the house.
     
    * * * *
     
    Sally’s snoring drove Rosalind out of the narrow bed they shared and into the barn. She spread a blanket over a pile of hay then sat there to slowly savour a cup of Thomas’ rum.
    Thomas.
    She was sick of the sight of him.
    The sooner she returned to Goody Wilson’s, the better.
    She drained the cup and dropped it to the soft hay. On a weary sigh, she lay back on the pallet, wrapping her cloak about her. Sleep drifted over