Whorespawn (Seven Brides for Seven Bastards #2 ) by Georgia Fox Page B

fair distance and he was hungry, not to mention lusty. And Sebastien d'Anzeray did not like to lose.
     
    * * * *
     
    Hidden amid the tall grass, Aelfa lay flat and smirked, delighting in her escape. By her brow a cricket chirped busily, singing a serenade.
    "Go away, fool," she whispered to it. "Would you lead the wolf to me?"
    Her giddy pulse settled to a steadier rhythm and with her cheek pressed to the earth, she peered through the waving fronds and waited, listening. She thought she heard a soft, low rumble. Lifting on her elbows, she looked across the valley. Beneath an eerie copper sunset the long grass danced, stirred by a sudden strong zephyr that came out of nowhere to dispel the thick heat of the day. And now she felt that thunder through her body where it touched the ground. It trembled through her bones, made her heartbeat race, caused her skin to prickle and shiver.
    He was coming. There, over the hill he rose, like premature midnight chasing away the daylight. Apparently he didn't give up easily. Had her red hair given her away?
    Scrambling to her feet she dived onward through the meadow, cursing the wicked curiosity that made her spy upon him in the first place.

Chapter Two
     
    "Where have you been, Whorespawn?" her husband demanded, cuffing her around the ear. "Are we supposed to starve here waiting for you to dawdle back and serve our supper?"
    The potter's one-room cottage vibrated with his bellowing anger. The stifling heat that day had done naught, it seemed, to help his naturally sour temper.
    "And what's this?" He grabbed her thick hair and twisted it around his fist. "Running about with your head uncovered. A wife covers her hair at all times." He yanked hard and the pain sliced through her skull, but Aelfa kept her lips tight. "Do you never listen to me, bitch? Mayhap there's something blocking your ears that needs knocking out?"
    The second blow of his fat hand knocked her across the cottage. He followed and she dodged a third strike only by ducking and reaching for her apron.
    Usually by the end of the day Aelfa was tired, her mind dull, her manner listless. If the potter found some reason to hit her—and he never needed much excuse—she would fall like a straw doll. Tonight however she was alive for once. Spying on that dangerously handsome stranger and then outracing him across a meadow, getting away by a hair's breadth, was like being revived by a splash of cold water.
    Her pulse was racing and her legs ached from running, but it was a good ache. Inside she was so giddy that she barely felt her husband's presence, let alone his slaps. Fearing he would see the change in her, she bowed her head quickly and got on with the supper. Fortunately she could blame the heat for her flushed cheeks and the perspiration stains marking her gown.
    When her lazy eldest stepson stuck out his foot and she tripped, scalding her knuckles on the cook pot, it didn't even matter. She had the vision of that naked beast to entertain her. Along with musings of what might have happened had he caught her. Under her gown, tiny goose bumps lifted across her skin as if the stranger was there and had touched her.
    The potter's complaints bubbled away, fading in and out of her awareness. "If I find you outside the walls again—alone—I'll beat you so hard you'll wish you were dead. Ungrateful wench." He burped loudly into his bowl as he watched her move about the cottage. "I rue the day I ever took you in out of pity."
    Pity? She wanted to laugh. He'd taken her in because he wanted free labor and that was all there was to it. She was a girl of thirteen when he married her. His wife had just died, leaving him with three sons to take care of, cook for and clothe. And Aelfa was about to be hanged in the town square for stealing food. No one cared that she stole for her sick mother.  Thus the potter performed a "charitable" deed by making her his wife and saving her from the gallows.
    "It was the red hair that lured me in,"