Innocence Enslaved by Maddie Taylor, Melody Parks Page B

chair. Then he got in his face and snarled in a rage.
    “ I know the devil already owns your soul, Ervin Ives, and I pray that he takes it and tortures you as you have the unfortunates of Lancore. I have goodness and justice on my side. I pray the good Lord is paying attention as well because with his help, I intend to win your challenge.”
    By the time he was through, his volume had risen and the words came out in a roar with his fury. Lord Ervin flinched and his pudgy face paled with fear. Corbet then let go of the pathetic excuse for a man, took a step back, and watched with undisguised hatred as the arrogant devil slumped to the floor.
    “When is the challenge?” he barked.
    “In two days,” Ervin choked, rising clumsily to his feet and dusting himself off. Once he stood before him, he added, “Arrive two hours before sundown; you will report to my guards and they will prepare you. I will enjoy seeing Huan send you to your maker, you impudent pup.” As he spoke, he walked stiffly to the door and flung it open, signaling for one of his guards. As the armed man moved inside, Ervin straightened his clothes, puffing up in his self-importance now that he had strength behind him. “Now be gone before I have your head for laying your hands on me.”
    Corbet was well pleased to be done with him and marched to the door. At the last moment, he stopped and stared at Phillip Boren with utter contempt. “May you go straight to hell and burn for all eternity for making your daughter endure this atrocity.”
    With that he stormed from the Boren home, nearly ripping the front door from its hinges. He called to Sara, who was sitting under a tree in the meadow crying her heart out. “In two days, you will be mine,” he promised her, his hatred and anger filling him with confidence. “I will take you from Lord Ervin and your father. And I swear, you will never see the likes of them again.”
    She got up and ran to him, they met halfway in the meadow and embraced. Then with the sun shining down on them as though it were a message from the Almighty that all would be well, they kissed.
     
    Although Emilia didn’t want to imagine his lips on another woman, she was near to swooning at the sheer romance of the love story. “It’s heart-wrenching and seems too impossible to be real.”
    “That’s because that tale is full of more cow dung than the back pasture.” Both young women started and twisted toward the door. Alice stood there, her scowling face rife with anger.
    “You mean it isn’t true?” Emilia exclaimed.
    “It is!” Muriel protested. “I heard it as a firsthand account from Bec—” She stopped short of divulging her secret for the second time that night. “I learned it from someone who was there. She saw and heard it all.”
    “So the sun shone down from the heavens upon them? Was that real? Or the words Corbet and Lord Ervin spoke, they are an actual accounting?”
    “Well, yes,” she insisted.
    Emilia glanced up when Muriel’s voice quivered slightly. Seeing her cheeks pinken, she frowned, as did her mother.
    “All right,” Muriel allowed. “I might have embellished a bit, but the basis of the story is true, every word.” She looked at Emilia and cried, “I swear it.”
    Not knowing what to believe, she watched as Muriel was propelled out the door with a hearty swat on her behind and a promise of more with the stout oven paddle in the morning. Once she was gone, Alice turned back to her.
    “I won’t tell the master what went on tonight. It would upset him to rehash the dreadful tale because mixed into the drama were threads of truth. I will expect you to keep it to yourself, however. Is that understood?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    She nodded. “Back to bed with you now.”
    “Wait. Can’t you tell me if Corbet fought Huan and won Sara?”
    “They married, didn’t they?”
    “But then how did she die? That was the question that I asked Muriel. She never got to that part of the