“Och, away with ye now,” Mr. Campbell said, though he looked pleased. “Get home before dark. These roads arenae safe for a young lass alone.”
Piper nodded and stepped out of the bakery into the late afternoon sun.
The village of Kilbride was quiet; most folks were already home for supper. She should hurry. Her parents would be expecting their wages, as they always did.
Her hand went to her pocket, feeling the weight of the coins. So much money. Enough to buy fabric for a new dress, or a book—oh, how she missed having books to read. Alexandra had left a few for her, but her parents had sold them years ago.
I could hide some of it,just a few coins. They’d never ken.
But even as the thought formed, her back began to tingle—a phantom pain from the last time her father had caught her holding back money. She’d only kept two coins, hoping to save enough to eventually leave. He’d beaten her so badly she couldn’t work for three days.
“The money ye earn belongs to this family,” he’d snarled, his breath reeking of cheap whisky. “Every last piece. Ye think ye deserve to keep it? Ye think ye’re better than us?”
No. She couldn’t risk it. Not again.
Piper walked through the familiar streets, her pace quickening as dread settled like a stone in her stomach.
She passed Mrs. MacLeish’s cottage, where the old woman was taking in washing from the line. Passed the blacksmith’s forge, already dark and silent. Passed the well where she’d spent so many afternoons as a child, hiding from her parents’ wrath.
Just give them the money and go to bed. Tomorrow ye’ll work again, and it’ll be the same as always. Daenae think about it.
But she did think about it. Couldn’t help but think about it. Twenty-four years old, and she had nothing to show for her life but scars on her back and a heavy heart.
Alexandra would have been so disappointed.
The thought of her neighbor—the woman who’d been more of a mother to her than her own had ever been—brought tears to Piper’s eyes.
Alexandra had died ten years ago, but Piper still missed her every single day. She still heard her gentle voice:
Ye’re worth more than this, sweet girl. Ye deserve kindness. Ye deserve love.
But kindness and love felt like fairy tales, stories for other people. Not for girls like Piper.
She turned the corner onto her street and stopped dead.
Three men stood outside her parents’ cottage. Large men, rough-looking, with hard faces and harder eyes. They wore dark clothes and had weapons at their sides—not the honest weapons of soldiers or guardsmen, but the kind carried by men who did ugly work for uglier reasons.
Every instinct Piper possessed screamed at her to run. To turn around and disappear into the village, to hide until these men were gone.
But her feet wouldn’t move. She stood frozen, watching as her mother appeared in the doorway, laughing at something one of the men said. Her father emerged behind her, his expression eager, almost fawning.
Nay. Nay, nay, nay.
“Ah, there she is!” Her mother’s voice rang out, bright and cheerful—a tone Piper had rarely heard directed at her. “There’s our Piper! Come here, darlin’, come meet these gentlemen!”
Piper’s legs finally remembered how to work, but they carried her forward instead of away. Toward the cottage. Towardthose cruel-looking men. Toward whatever nightmare was about to unfold.
“Piper, sweet girl,” her mother cooed, reaching out to take Piper’s arm. Her fingers dug in hard enough to bruise, even as her smile never wavered. “These kind men have come all this way just to see ye. Isnae that lovely?”
Up close, the men were even more frightening.
The tallest one had a scar running from his temple to his jaw. The second had part of his ear missing. The third—the one standing closest—looked at Piper the way her father looked at a bottle of whisky, with hungry, desperate eyes.
“She’ll do,” the scarred one said, his voice like gravel. “A bit plumper than I expected, but some men like that.”
Plumper. Piper’s cheeks burned. She’d heard those words, or variations of them, her entire life. From her parents, from cruel children in the village, from the mirror itself. She wasn’t willowy and elegant like the ladies she sometimes glimpsed in their fine carriages. She was soft and round, with curves that her mother said made her look like a peasant.
“What’s goin’ on?” Piper asked, trying to pull her arm free. Her mother’s grip tightened. “Who are these men?”
