Page 17 of The Iron Earl
She’d failed him again. He’d sent her out to collect the red berries that they’d passed a half mile back, and she’d come back with reddish-pink berries. Poisonous reddish-pink berries.
Rupe was her only ally in the camp, for she eased his job by little bits here and there, but she would quickly lose the only person that talked to her if she kept erring like this.
She’d bungled it three days ago when Rupe had taught her how to gut and skin rabbits, her vomit just missing the full cauldron of stew.
The day before that she’d botched it with all the men when they had to take turns staying up on watch instead of sleeping because of the highwaymen she had entangled Lachlan with.
She was no longer Evalyn. No longer the extra baggage that hitched herself to the rear wagon.Wretched wench.That was how she was now known.
Lachlan had ensured they couldn’t hit her, but everyone addressed her as a wretched wench every chance they got.
Everyone except Rupe and Lachlan. Lachlan never addressed her. Never looked at her. And Rupe just liked her name, rolling his tongue along the V every time he said it.
Rupe was likely to join the lot of them dubbing her a wretched wench after her latest misstep.
Trying to poison everyone in the camp endeared her to no one.
Evalyn stared down at the drops of rabbit blood oozing over her hand. Bile chased up her throat. The scarlet drips fell, almost landing on her skirt and she jumped back.
Dirt, she had chance of removing from her mother’s dress. Streaks of blood, not as much.
She looked at the men in the camp, standing and sitting about the main fire, cups of Scotch whisky to their faces, the low rumbles of their laughter and conversation filling the night air. Lachlan and two of the men were absent, gone to speak with the local landowner. Everywhere they stopped, bundles were either added or subtracted from the wagon per Lachlan’s orders. Rupe had said Lachlan did a fair bit of trading everywhere he traveled.
The men still in the camp all looked at ease, the wide fire lending light to the cloudy night and bathing their hulking forms in the warm orange glow of the flames.
She gagged down the bile that stained her tongue and moved toward the back of the wagon where Rupe prepared the food. She had to gut this rabbit. If she didn’t, he would banish her as his help, and then where would she be?
At least Rupe offered her an existence. A reason for being in the camp.
She set the knife down on the wooden planks folded flat from the rear of the wagon and began to stretch the rabbit out when a scream reached her ears from behind.
A scream of terror.
Her head whipped up, searching the faces of the men by the fire. None paused in conversation, none looked as though the scream had reached their ears.
“Did anyone hear that?”
The closest man to her, Colin, looked up from the fire. “Get to that rabbit wretched wench.”
Scattered chuckles floated through the air.
Her head dipped and she looked down at the rabbit clutched in her fist, trying to set her hands in motion while disengaging her brain from what she had to do.
A muffled fresh scream echoed through the trees behind her, then abruptly cut off.
Her head snapped up.
Rupe.Hell.
Not the one person in this blasted camp that had made the journey bearable.
She glanced at the men. Not a one paused at the sound.
Her feet started running before her mind caught up and she dashed into the woods, aiming as straight as she could to where she thought the scream had come from.
At least she was fast now—Lachlan had procured boots for her from Baron Rogerton’s household when they had set up camp the first night.
The pair of brown boots had been sitting under the wagon when they had arrived back in camp. Well worn, the leather on them soft and supple, they were slightly tight but entirely comfortable as opposed to her mother’s silk slippers she’d been hobbling along in.