Read Online Ever Bound by Odessa Gillespie Black - Free Book Online Page A

pulse wouldn’t have quickened, but the thought of being near Annabeth’s dwelling with good cause was exhilarating. A little too quickly, I obliged and went out the door.
    With a long pair of scissors from the barn, I cut back stray roses.
    It was so hot that I had to flee my shirt. It was soaked with perspiration and made me itch.
    “Cole.” A young lady’s voice but not the right one.
    Despite the heat, a chill broke out on my body.
    “Will you please meet with me at the pond this evening?” Grace said.
    “I can’t. You should be inside. Resting.” Without making eye contact, I continued my work. How dare she ask me to meet her? Much less at that godforsaken hole in the ground. I had a great weapon in my hand. I could have—
    “I really need someone to talk to.” Grace clutched her skirts and dropped them beside me as her hand reached for my arm.
    “I’m pretty sure you ruined your chances of talking to me when you put something in my food and tore my virtue away from me.” I backed away from the roses. The maze didn’t deserve my wrath. The piece of art was too beautiful for me to be near when I was angry.
    Her skirts rustled in angry swishes as she fled. The door to the main house slammed.
    * * * *
    That night, oddly, the Rollins invited our family to dinner at the main house.
    In the dining room, seated around the table were my mother, my father, Mr. Rollins, Mrs. Rollins and Mrs. Rollins’s sister. She and her daughter had come for a visit.
    I was glad for the distraction because this had already turned out to be one of the most uncomfortable evenings of my life. I would be in the room with Annabeth and Grace at the same time.
    I couldn’t turn down the Rollinses, nor could I hide under my bed. I would have preferred counting cracks in the floorboards to sweating profusely in my Sunday best while under the speculation of Annabeth’s whole family.
    “Well, don’t you look lovely,” Mrs. Rollins said to one of her girls. Up till then, neither had entered the dining hall, and the long table was almost full of the guests and family members. China clinked, napkins rustled, and the servants rattled pans in the kitchen as they prepared to enter with the food.
    I was afraid to look up to see to whom the rustling of skirts belonged. It was a fifty-fifty chance. I looked up.
    Good thing I wasn’t a gambler.
    “Thank you, Mama.” It was Grace in a big, fancy, red dress. Her cheeks were smudged with a bit of rouge and her lips matched the dress in color. She would have been alluring if she hadn’t been the spawn of Satan.
    It was time to face my demons, or demon in this case. I said, a bit stiffly, “Yes, you do look nice.”
    Grace tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Thank you.”
    Following her were Grace’s cousins. She didn’t bother to introduce us as they took places across the table, a few settings down.
    The rich people at the table were dressed in the finest of frilly dresses and pressed suit coats with scarves tied around their necks, as if they were headed to some big ball.
    Pop’s Sunday’s finest paled in comparison to Mr. Rollins’s, but he fit right in. With his napkin on his lap and his elbows off the table, he was in a deep political conversation with the master of the house as if he never had been a farm hand.
    To my dismay, Grace had taken the place setting directly in front of me. She jerked her napkin open and slapped it into her lap.
    Annabeth entered the room. As she kissed her aunt and her cousins, she took up all the oxygen in the whole house.
    My chest swelled with admiration and awe. Every time I saw her, she grew more beautiful.
    Grace glared at me as I stared past her.
    Annabeth’s dress was purple and black. Without a bit of makeup, her skin glowed and her pink lips looked as if I’d just kissed them. Her dipping neckline was that much more troubling.
    As gentlemanly as I’d fooled her into thinking I was, it wasn’t the embroidery and beaded