Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Marigold held her breath, leaning over the kindling as the flame kissed the birch bark. Relief breathed out of her, nearly destroying the little miracle, but the flame danced back, bigger as if fighting as hard as her to survive.
Air, it needed air.
Softly, she blew a shaky breath toward the wood, careful not to blow too hard. When it caught, she cupped the bark as if tending a sacred altar. Laughter bubbled out of her, spreading into a glowing smolder that scorched the dry wood, then quadrupled in size. Carefully, she laid it in the crevice of the smallest log and blew some more.
When real fire finally danced in the enormous hearth, the warmth and light bathed her like a holy baptism. She knelt as close as she could without getting burnt, letting the heat seep into her frozen skin while her clothes began the slow process of thawing.
For a moment, she indulged in the quiet warmth, shutting her eyes. But when she opened them again, the room now aglow from the crackling flames, her fingers were blue and her clothes still cold and sopping.
Warmth couldn’t solve everything. She needed dry clothes.
It crushed her to leave the sanctuary of the marble hearth, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Her garments clung to her body like icy chains as she forced herself to stand. Her bones and joints popped with objections, threatening to drag her back toward hypothermia’s embrace.
Warm clothes. She needed to find warm clothes, then she could come back to the fire and sleep.
Shivering, she stumbled out of the massive room into the corridor, heat escaping her skin rapidly and bringing her dangerously close to death again. The ground floor revealed itself as a maze of common areas, each more opulent than the last. A dining room that could seat twenty like visiting royalty. Sitting rooms furnished with leather sofas and fur throws that probably cost more than most people’s yearly salaries.
This was somebody’s home. She was trespassing. But guilt be damned, survival trumped propriety every time. Hopefully, if the homeowner or a servant was home, they were merciful and not someone prone to asking questions.
Marigold wasn’t sure how well she could lie in her current state, as exhausted as she was, but after coming this far, she’d do almost anything to survive. Personal items such as clothing remained elusive as she searched the house. Cabinets only hid dishes and strange, foreign collectibles that looked ancient and fragile. The curved staircase led her to the second floor, where corridors branched like arteries feeding the castle’s heart.
She chose a door at random and pushed it open, revealing a sanctuary of masculine luxury. Dark wood and rich fabrics in deep burgundy and forest green created an atmosphere of controlled decadence. The bed dominated the space like an altar to hedonism, its frame carved with the same obsessive attention to detail that characterized everything else in this place.
But salvation lay in the wardrobe. Rushing over the threshold, she yanked the doors of the armoire open. Inside, she discovered exactly what her desperate situation required. Men’s clothing, but that detail mattered less than the thick cable-knit sweater that would swallow her whole, the wool socks that could serve as leg warmers, and hanging in the back like a gift from benevolent gods, a fur coat that radiated more luxury than most people would see in a lifetime.
She stripped from her wet clothes with shaking fingers, modesty abandoned in favor of survival. The sweater cascaded to her knees, sleeves dangling past her fingertips like a child playing dress-up. The wool socks transformed into thigh-high stockings. And when she wrapped the fur coat around herself, the sensation transcended mere warmth into something approaching rebirth.
The silk-lined fur was impossibly soft against her skin, and whatever magnificent creature had donated its pelt must have been enormous. The coat enveloped her completely, heavy and warm and scented with something masculine. Cedar and amber and something indefinably wild, reminding her of the untamed forests and hidden dangers she’d trekked to get here.
For the first time since fleeing Whitmore, she felt like she might actually live and allowed herself a moment of pride. Anyone who knew her would never imagine her capable of surviving what she’d been through in the last several months, let alone the last few hours.
She nearly laughed. Was she a badass? Maybe.
Up until recently, even she would have said that wasn’t true. Marigold Calder was a sheltered appendage of her family name. But that wasn’t true anymore. She was no longer Marigold. She was Mary Fuckin Langford, and she liked it.
Her stomach growled, disrupting her first true moment of cocky victory, then cramped with such fierce hunger that she doubled over with a sharp gasp. She couldn’t remember her last substantial meal. Terror had murdered her appetite, but she wasn’t afraid anymore. At least not to the degree she’d been. Now, it was all about survival and meeting her basic needs.