All Scot and Bothered (Devil You Know #2) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,3
the shame struck her dumb.
To distract herself from her humiliation, she cataloged the life she was leaving behind. The wobbly table at which they ate their silent meager meals, her every portion rationed, and her every bite berated. The dilapidated parlor, eternally empty of company. The sitting room with the perpetually cold hearth, even though a rainy October was upon them, where she’d read nothing but the Bible and other canonical texts by firelight until her eyes crossed.
“It is my duty to save her from the sins of her mother!” Josiah Teague finally found his voice, though Cecelia couldn’t make out his features from across the room. “Most men wouldn’t have brought up a girl begot in sin against his own marriage. Remember that, Cecelia, when you’re tempted to commit immoral acts by these fallen, forsaken women! I would have saved your soul. I can save you still!”
“Oh, quit your bleating, you limp-peckered billy goat.” Genny shifted Cecelia behind her as the guard strong-armed Josiah into a chair at the table. “There’s more singin’ God’s praises and hollering hallelujahs in my house than yours, believe you me.” With a saucy wink, Genny turned to Cecelia and bent down to bring their faces level. “Now, aren’t you just a perfect porcelain baby doll,” she crooned, touching the tip of her finger to Cecelia’s pert nose. “I knew you’d be a pretty child, but you just beat all.”
“Thank you, Miss Leveaux.” Cecelia’s cheeks were so warm, she feared she’d contracted a fever.
“Miss Leveaux! You hear that, Wexler?” Genny straightened to give her mirth room to shake out of her in the most cheerful laugh.
Wexler didn’t laugh. Didn’t move. He stayed where he was, looming over Josiah Teague in a threatening manner.
Wiping an invisible tear of hilarity from the corner of her eye, Genny leaned back down to Cecelia. “You call me Genny. We’re friends now, remember?”
Cecelia nodded, flicking a glance to the man who’d been her father, thinking that her last memory of him would be of his blurry face, as her spectacles were still crushed somewhere in the schoolyard dirt.
It was all right. She knew what expression he wore.
“You have any other frock than this, baby? You must have grown out of this—well, we’ll call it a dress if we have to—a year past.”
“She doesn’t need to succumb to the sin of vanity,” the reverend hissed, his features mottled with such contained rage and fear, his skin had darkened from crimson to violet. “She’s a weak-willed, gluttonous girl. Look at her! I’ve done my best by her, but she sneaks food in the middle of the night, and no amount of discipline, correction, or isolation will break her of the habit. It’s not my responsibility to buy her new clothing when she’s bursting out of a perfectly reasonably sized garment.”
“You excuse me a minute, honey.” Genny pulled herself to her full height, stomped past Wexler, and struck Josiah Teague across the face. Hard. Hard enough to rock him back in his chair.
Gaining his balance, the reverend surged to his feet, but was again wrestled back down by the block of muscle that was the silent and enigmatic Wexler.
Genny didn’t even flinch. She caught Cecelia and swept her outside to a sumptuous coach, tucking her into a fur-lined cloak.
The abiding Wexler remained inside for a moment, and despite everything, Cecelia opened the curtain and anxiously watched the door.
“Don’t you worry that pretty red head of yours.” Genny settled across from her and spread her skirts before patting Cecelia’s hand. “He’s just signing some papers.”
“What papers?”
“Tell me about you, darlin’,” Genny encouraged with a gentle smile. “What do you do to keep occupied? What have you been taught other than prayin’?”
Shyly, Cecelia she pulled her notebook away from her middle where she’d kept it, extending it to the woman.
Genny looked down at the book for a pregnant moment, opening it with two careful fingers as though she expected a monster to be flattened between the pages.
Cecelia held her breath as the woman began to turn the pages with increasing speed until she met her gaze with shining eyes.
“No one told me you were an artist, little doll.”
Cecelia crinkled her forehead in bemusement.
She was no artist. No poet or otherwise. She’d attempted those pastimes with painstaking effort when she was isolated, to disastrous effect.
She snatched the notebook that was extended back to her and looked down at what she found there. Just exponents and theorems, limits and derivatives, formulae, functions, and corresponding graphs.