“I want nothing to do with him, Belle. We’re done.” Except for the small matter of her needing to seduce him for the Malachai, but it seemed like a bad idea to mention that to the one person who could rat her out and see her gutted for it.
“’Tis a pity, that.”
“Why?”
Shaking her head, Belle sighed and released her. She fetched a length of the rope Valynda had been working on for the rigging and headed off.
At first, Valynda assumed she was done with her and was going to carry it to the mast to repair something. Since it was Belle’s job, it made sense.
But, in a grand huff, Belle came back to her.
“You know how I died?”
Of course not. How Belle had died was one of the best-kept secrets on board the ship, which, given the grand secrets of this crew, said a lot, as most of them weren’t too keen on sharing much of anything, other than a few random shoves, and blows to the egos whenever someone got to thinking too much of themselves. Not even the captain knew what had happened to Belle to bring on her damnation.
The woman kept a lid on that tighter than Sallie kept the cork on his rum bottle where he stored his soul.
Valynda shook her head.
Her eyes turned as stormy as the seas right before a tempest. “I had a family I loved more than anything on this earth or beyond. Husband and a daughter so beautiful that even the angels above wept in envy of her.” Belle’s voice cracked with the weight of her heartache and pain. “They were the pride of me life, they were, and maybe that was me mistake. I took too much pride in caring for them. In loving them and being loyal to them before even meself. In putting them above and beyond everything else, and thinking nothing and no one could ever divide us. Because I truly believed that—that nothing and no one could ever get between me husband and me. That we had that rare love that comes along once in a fairy-tale dream.”
Closing her eyes, Belle visibly winced. “Until the day me husband hired a new barmaid for his tavern. Plain and homely, she was, and I thought nothing of her at first. But it didn’t take long to see that she was all kinds of evil. It was evident in the way she talked to others. How she put them down whenever me husband wasn’t around and how smug she acted, as if she owned the place. I tried me best to tell him exactly who and what she was. I saw the devil in that one, clear as I stand here before you. She was evil incarnate, and it bled from her tongue with every honey-coated barb and well-practiced, left-handed compliment she dropped every time she opened her fetid mouth. But he refused to listen to me. He told me over and over that I was being ridiculous and that we needed her. I couldn’t believe it. He hired her as a servant, and before I knew it, he had her even living with us as if she was a member of our family! He’d even go off a-gallivanting with her in the middle of the day to frolic while I’d be left alone to work by meself to support our family and watch our daughter! ’Twas so bad, some even began to think her his wife instead of me. Instead of being ashamed for what he did and how he behaved, the beast that he became began to throw his thoughtless acts in me face and to blame me for it. And I grew physically sick and weak from the stress of having to work all the time to pick up the slack as he played more and more with this stranger who divided him from his family and duties.”
Valynda was stunned on multitudinous levels. One, she hadn’t known Belle was ever married. Hadn’t known she’d been a mother. Nor that their petite sorceress had owned a tavern.
Indeed, it was all she could do to keep from gaping at all the facts her friend had kept secret.
Twisting the rope in her hands, Belle paused as if the memories were more than she could bear. “And me husband wasn’t the only one she toyed with. That horrible slag bitch caused trouble between everyone she came into contact with. ’Twas as if she fed from the very turmoil she fostered, like some gluttonous maggot what couldn’t get its fill. Every night ’twas a brawl between patrons caused by her and that rancid tongue that hid its venom beneath disguised insults and doublespeak.”
Belle curled her lip. “She had a way of getting into someone’s mind and twisting it around until they turned on even their very best friend to the point of murder. And it wasn’t just the patrons she went against. Workers we’d had for years quit without warning, and all because of the mischief she’d put in their weak-willed minds where she’d played on their fears and turned their thoughts against me, as if I was the cause of it. For no reason other than she was a mean, petty she-bitch, bent on the utter destruction of all those around her. And that was nothing compared to what she’d done to me poor, pathetic husband.”
Valynda held her breath at the venom in Belle’s voice. That was a new tone for the tiny woman, especially since Belle never talked badly about anyone. The fact that she didn’t like this woman told her all she needed to know.
She had to be evil for Belle not to like her, and her husband to be a true idiot not to know that one basic fact about Belle. If he knew nothing else about his wife, he should have known that. There was an innate kindness in her that radiated out from her like the warm glow of sunlight after a fierce storm.
Belle got along with everyone. She loved everyone and no one could be around her for five heartbeats and not feel it. Everyone was drawn to her. While she might be a bit verbally caustic, she was compassion incarnate. There was no one she wouldn’t help. No one she wouldn’t reach out to if they were in need.
And if Belle didn’t like someone … they were rotten to their very core and should be avoided like a poisonous viper in the Garden of Eden.
How could the man who married her not know that?
“What did he say when you tried to tell him about the woman he’d let in?”
Belle ground her teeth. “That she was only trying to help.”
Valynda grimaced at the stupidity of that answer. How could anyone be so blind as to not see through something so obvious? Especially if he’d been married to Belle for any length of time. Or known her at all?
With a bitter laugh, Belle shook her head. “I was too sick to argue against them both. Besides, he’d always been my hero. We did everything together. Until that trollop showed up, we’d seldom ever had an argument. We were best friends in all things … or so I thought. And never had I known him to be weak-minded, yet she took control of him like a marionette. Pathetic fool thought himself in charge, but she played him for everything he wasn’t worth. Before I knew it, he turned on me and our daughter in ways I couldn’t fathom. No longer were those his words coming from his mouth, but hers. He let that monstrous whore torturema petite filleand me like she was the mistress of his home and I the tart in the tavern he’d hired off the street. Nothing I could say or do would get through to his mind. ’Twas as if she’d removed his brains and replaced them with mush. I couldn’t understand how he could just stand there and bear witness to her evil and say nothing. How he couldn’t see what was right before him and blame us for her wickedness. Whatever I said, orma petiteShara, that wench turned around and mutated. She made even the most innocuous comment sinister with her wicked machinations, and never once did he doubt her lies.”
Belle’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “As long as I live, I’ll never understand how it was my Robbie turned on me the way he did. We’d known each other since we were children. Never did I say or do anything to make him doubt me. I gave him all I had and more, and I loved him more than me life. Had he simply come to me and said he wanted to leave with her, I’d have been fine with that and wished him well. Truly, I’d have packed his bags meself. But nay, rather he stood by and let that slag whore poison me andma fille.”
Wait …
What?
Shocked, it took Valynda a moment to grasp the magnitude of what she said.
Then she gasped in horror. “Nay!”
